Podcast „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“

Whether in cosmetics, adhesives, construction chemicals, paints, or pharmaceutical products – the chemicals from the Hamburg-based family company Biesterfeld are found almost everywhere in our daily lives, often without us realizing it. “It’s really a supermarket of chemicals: Biesterfeld could be in almost any product,” says Carola Biesterfeld, a member of the owning family, in the podcast “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum”, which was recorded live and in front of an audience at the Maschinenraum Momentum 2025.

Her great-grandfather, merchant Wilhelm Ernst Hinrich Biesterfeld, founded a salt trading business in Hamburg in 1906. Later, chemicals and fertilizers were added, and the company expanded internationally. Today, the former Hamburg salt trader has grown into a global group operating in plastics, rubber, and specialty chemicals. The company employs more than 1,100 people and recently generated annual revenues of around €1.3 billion.

In 2004, the company was converted into a stock corporation (AG), and the family withdrew from executive management. Since then, they have guided the group through the supervisory board, on which Carola Biesterfeld serves as Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board. “We try to draw a very clear line between power, money, and love, in order to keep the emotions that naturally exist in a family out of professional management,” she says. For this reason, it is out of the question for a family member to take over the company’s management again.

In the podcast, Carola Biesterfeld also talks about transformation, the expansion strategy, and how even her grandfather used to recruit executives — in the podcast “Alles neu…? Aus dem Maschinenraum” with Tobias Rappers, managing director of Maschinenraum, and Katja Michel, editor at Capital.

How can the origin and future of Mittelstand companies be courageously united? What are the challenges facing family businesses and what experiences do they gather in digital transformation? These questions are answered by “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“, the interview podcast for German Mittelstand*. Once a month, Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Nils Kreimeier, Senior Editor of the business magazine Capital, talk to thought leaders and makers from the heart of the German economy and focus on the personalities and their motivation. *The podcast is in German.

For more episodes of “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“ please click here!