Müller Closes Eastern Lines While Still Buying Dairies

Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller will close two eastern production lines and put about 320 jobs at risk. The Homann sauce plant in Rogätz, Saxony-Anhalt, is due to stop by the end of September 2027. The sliced-cheese unit at Sachsenmilch in Leppersdorf, Saxony, is due to stop on 31 December 2026.

The privately owned group told staff on 6 October 2026. It is also in talks to buy Vogtlandmilch in Plauen, and it completed the purchase of plant-based maker Berief Food in Beckum on 6 July 2026. The German factory map is being redrawn, not emptied.

Two Closures on One Factory Calendar

Rogätz is a full site close. Leppersdorf is not. Sachsenmilch’s campus in the municipality of Wachau, near the A4 in the Bautzen district, keeps its sour-milk cheese and mozzarella. About 3,000 people work on that campus. About 160 of them sit on the sliced-cheese line that will go, along with its packing and office rooms.

Homann Feinkost’s sauce works in the Börde district employs about 160 people, and the whole plant is marked to cease operations by the end of September 2027. Homann took the site in 2008 with Hamker. Homann itself has sat inside Müller since 2011. Staff heard the plan at an on-site meeting on 6 October 2026, the same day a spokesman confirmed the cheese-line close in Saxony.

THE TWO SHUTDOWNS

The cheese line has 86 days from the 6 October 2026 notice. Rogätz has 359 days, through to the end of September 2027. Müller said it will talk to both works councils about stays inside the group, contract changes, and training. No finished social plan has been published.

Glass Jars Lost the German Sauce Aisle

Müller’s own notice puts three weights on Rogätz: a cost base that cannot price the sauces against rivals, a large bill for new kit, and a shift in the aisle. Shoppers are walking away from sauces in glass jars, the format that plant was built to fill, and they are picking other packs instead. The group said that drop is leaving the lines underused, which then makes the cost base worse.

Marcus-Dominic Hauck, managing director of the sauces and dressings unit, told staff the sums do not turn around.

A comprehensive economic analysis has shown that the Rogätz production site has no prospect of recovering from its current loss-making situation and returning to long-term profitability. We are aware that this decision will cause consternation amongst our staff. We will be holding discussions with the works council in the near future, with the aim of finding socially responsible solutions.

Marcus-Dominic Hauck, Managing Director, Sauces and Dressings, Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller

The food and hospitality union NGG, which organises the site, said Rogätz had been a profit engine for years because of what it could make. The union asked what the company had done to match a market that had already moved, and answered that question itself: nothing. Jobs in the Börde district are thin on the ground, so the union wants a social plan and a transfer company, not a clean break.

What Stays Open at Sachsenmilch Leppersdorf?

The sliced-cheese close is easier to over-read than Rogätz. Headlines that treat Leppersdorf as a dead factory miss the rest of the yard. Müller’s spokesman said the sour-milk cheese rooms and the mozzarella rooms are not in the decision. Branded and private-label sliced cheeses stop there. Landliebe sliced cheese is due to move to another dairy under licence; the group would not name the partner.

WHAT STAYS AT LEPPERSDORF

• Sour-milk cheese: The rooms keep running after 31 December 2026.
• Mozzarella: That line is outside the close, on the same campus.
• The wider site: About 3,000 jobs remain on a yard Müller has used as a hub for Müllermilch, Sachsenmilch and Weihenstephan.
• Milk intake: Saxon dairy farmers have given no sign the group will take less milk; extra milk was still being sought in the catchment.

Müller would not say how much less milk the cheese-line stop will take. For farmers that silence has so far counted as calm, because a campus of that size still needs tankers. For the 160 people on sliced cheese, packing and the related offices, the next question is whether “continued employment within the company” means a real post on the same yard or a transfer that exists only on paper.

Homann’s Second Shutdown Wave

Rogätz is not Homann’s first trip through this script. In April 2017 Müller said four Homann plants would close by 2020: the home works at Dissen and the plant at Lintorf, both in Lower Saxony, plus Bottrop in North Rhine-Westphalia and Floh-Seligenthal in Thuringia. More than 1,000 jobs sat on those sites. The group said sharp deli competition had left the four plants with no path to lasting profit.

The favoured replacement then was a new central Homann plant at Leppersdorf, where Sachsenmilch already ran a large dairy. Müller said it would put up to 500 million euros into that shift and that every worker at the four plants would get an offer to move. Salads, sauces and dressings were meant to run from one German hub instead of four.

HOW THE MAP WAS DRAWN

1. 2008: Homann Feinkost takes the Rogätz sauce plant with Hamker.
2. 2011: Homann becomes part of Unternehmensgruppe Theo Müller.
3. April 2017: Müller says four Homann plants will close by 2020 and names Leppersdorf as the favoured new hub, with up to 500 million euros behind the move.
4. 2024: The Landliebe plant at Schefflenz stops after Müller’s takeover of that brand.
5. 6 July 2026: Berief Food in Beckum joins the group after German and Austrian merger clearance.
6. 6 October 2026: Staff at Rogätz and on the Leppersdorf cheese line are told those operations will stop.

Nine years after Leppersdorf was sold as Homann’s future, the same campus is losing its sliced-cheese rooms, and the last Homann sauce plant named in this round is being wound down. The 2017 centralisation did not freeze the map. It trained the group to keep moving volume onto fewer floors.

The Union Calls It Buy and Close

On 9 October 2026 the NGG’s eastern district put the two notices next to the Vogtlandmilch talks and said the pattern is now familiar. The union wrote that the group buys plants and closes them again, and that people who have worked those rooms for decades are left watching. It pointed back to Schefflenz in 2024, when Landliebe output moved to Aretsried and Leppersdorf, and to Heilbronn, which is due to stop by the end of 2026.

Sachsenmilch in Leppersdorf, Homann in Rogätz: Wieder sollen über 300 Arbeitsplätze bei Unternehmen der Müller-Gruppe wegfallen.
Wir sagen klar: Beschäftigte sind keine Verschiebemasse.
Mehr dazu auf unserer Website: 👉 https://t.co/jyCDez6coW pic.twitter.com/0fMlxPM6hF

— Gewerkschaft NGG Ost (@NggOst) October 9, 2026

At Leppersdorf the union wants every person on the cheese line offered a like-for-like job inside the group, on the same terms. At Rogätz it wants the social plan and the transfer company first, because the local labour market will not absorb 160 sauce-plant jobs on its own. It also asked why the works council was brought in so late. Müller’s public line is that talks with the councils are starting now, with “socially responsible solutions” as the aim.

MÜLLER AT 2025 SCALE

• People: 35,000 staff across the group.
• Plants: 22 production sites in the network the company lists.
• Sales: €10.3 billion in 2025.
• Reach: exports into more than 80 countries, with brands that include Müllermilch, Sachsenmilch, Weihenstephan, Landliebe and Homann.

About 320 jobs on two eastern lines sit inside that base. The group is large enough to move people, and large enough to decide that some rooms no longer earn their keep. Whether those 320 posts are absorbed on other floors is the live fight with the councils, not a fact on the 6 October 2026 notices.

In Plauen, a Third Dairy Is in Talks

Weeks before the closure notices, Müller confirmed talks with Vogtlandmilch’s management and supervisory board about buying the business, including the plant in Plauen. A spokesman said the talks were at an early stage and would need merger clearance. The dairy has about 150 staff in Plauen and dates itself to 1928. It is owned in equal parts by Erzeugergemeinschaft Milch Plauen and Molkereigenossenschaft Glauchau.

Those co-ops take milk from about 150 farms inside an 80 kilometre ring across Vogtland, western Saxony and eastern Thuringia. The dairy says it collects about 200 million kilograms of milk a year. Its packs run under Vogtlandweide and Sachsenland, and it fills Joe Clever school milk, calling itself Saxony’s only school-milk filler. Quark, UHT milk, butter and buttermilk are the core lines.

NGG said Plauen’s staff still need a straight answer on whether their jobs survive a sale. Saxon Greens have warned that a Müller-owned Vogtlandmilch would leave farmers with less room to bargain. Agriculture minister Georg-Ludwig von Breitenbuch has said the milk producers own the dairy and can decide without the state stepping in. Nothing in the 6 October 2026 notices ties the cheese-line close to that deal. The calendar still puts a possible third Saxony dairy on the same page as a cheese line being wound down in the same state.

Why Landliebe Outlives Its Own Factories

The brand arithmetic is colder than the site arithmetic. Landliebe’s Schefflenz plant stopped in 2024. In Heilbronn, works council chief Achim Steinbach said about 180 people are still on site while machines come out, with a stop due by the end of 2026. Müller kept the Landliebe name. Baden-Württemberg Landliebe milk is now filled by Schwarzwaldmilch in Freiburg, and other Landliebe lines were sent to Aretsried and Leppersdorf.

That is the same Leppersdorf now losing sliced cheese. The group will keep selling Landliebe slices from a licensee it will not name. Homann sauces will remain a Müller brand after Rogätz goes dark. Vogtlandmilch’s own names, if a deal ever closes, would sit under a group that already knows how to keep a label after a plant dies.

On 6 July 2026 Berief Food became part of the group after German and Austrian clearance. Müller said it would strengthen Beckum and, in the short term, add two additional filling lines for plant-based drinks. Managing director Bernd Eßer stays in charge of a unit the buyer wants to keep mostly separate. Berief had posted about €113 million of sales in 2025 and about 350 staff when the deal was described in May. Western plant-drink capacity is being added in the same year eastern glass-sauce capacity is being written off.

Rogätz still has until the end of September 2027, and its council still has to bargain a social plan. The sliced-cheese staff in Leppersdorf have until 31 December 2026. Plauen’s farmers still have a deal they have not signed. None of those clocks share a finish date, and that is the point of this map: Müller is timing exits and entries on different calendars, under the same group name.