In 1993, Camilo Sturm gave up his job and with Kraetzer began the company making organic products that today is known as Biospirit, which existed alongside the Can Sala rural guesthouse and the Bio's Ecomercat shop in Girona as part of the Luz de Vida group, the name they first began operating under from a warehouse in Moià.
Today, the company is located in a 23,000-square-metre building in Celrà (Gironès). If they began in 1993 with just three employees, today there are almost a hundred employees amongst the group's three pillars. Their almost 13 million euros turnover comes mostly from Biospirit, revenue that has continued to grow in the past five years. It is something that shows how companies like those participating in the Biocultura fair this week are gaining ground in the market.
An "unprepared" change
The move from the Moianès county was because of a lack of space and to be better connected. "We made the change in 1998 because the warehouse was too small and because in Girona we are closer to the roads coming from the north. We send a lot of things to the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and England, so it was much more practical for us," says Twei Sturm, who is in charge of marketing and sales. Their new location was also ideal to go ahead with the Can Sala project, the centre in which they made their dream of spreading a different style of life a reality.
The company is currently undergoing a change of management. Kraetzer's death in February –she led the company as general manager for 10 years after getting divorced from Sturm- means that the couple's five children are facing an unexpected change at the top. "She was at the forefront of everything, of Biospirit, at the house and the shop. It was an unexpected change and without any preparation. We are discovering things and giving priority to certain issues, but it is a time to try things out," says Sturm. And it is not the same thing to include the new generation in the company as it is training and preparing it to take over the management. "We are without that person who could have given us a lot of information and would have helped us to move ahead more easily. The changeover was not prepared," he adds about the challenge they are facing.
The family in one of the warehouses occupied by the Luz de Vida group. Ceded
The five siblings now lead the group from different areas. The general management is in the hands of Roos Sturm, who was the sales director for four years. They want to maintain the philosophy that their mother defended over 24 years of hard work, but adding what Twei Sturm describes as "a new and fresher point of view."
Modelling the business to the client
If there is one change that Sturm has noticed in recent years, it is that "the market has grown." "Before, the consumers were macrobiotic people or vegans, now we increasingly have more clients who are simply interested in eating more healthily," he points out. It is an increase that is due, in large part, to the inclusion of the generation that is now around 25 to 35 years of age and who "want their kids to eat cleanly." That has meant that their catalogue has gone from having a lot of ingredients to having increasingly more pre-prepared dishesor those that need a minimum of preparation.
This has become noticeable as much in the expansion of the brands they distribute as the number of products they import and package in their facilities in Celrà. "We began packaging our own products under the Biospirit brand in 1995; and now we have some 700 products under our own brand," he says. Cereals, flours and seeds are the best-selling products, as is the range of Japanese products imported directly from the Asian country.
In the past two years, the concept of the shop has changed. Ceded
Their products can be found in any specialised establishment, but also in their 240-square-metre shop in Girona, the Bio's Ecomercat. The shop is not a place just to sell their own brand, and there are other organic products sold there, offering "a wide range of possibilities," as they work with some 200 different suppliers. Their customers are "loyal and demanding, who know what they want, know about brands and who read all the labels," says Sturm.
Catalonia, the Basque Country, Madrid, Valencia and Andalusia are, in that order, the main areas for sales and the ones that have the most mature organic markets. Despite their main clientele being private consumers, the numbers of restaurant owners and food handlers like bakeries are on the rise. Right now they make up 10% of Biospirit's customer base, a figure that the company believes will grow in the next five years and that they are already catering for with packaging of different sizes to adapt to all needs.
Attention on local produce
Around 75% of what the group sells comes from abroad, and only 25% is local produce. According to Sturm, the reason lies in when the founders opened the business they did so with contacts in the Netherlands that they still use and that have the most experience in the market, but also in that almost all local production is destined for export. "Here we produce a lot and of high quality, but almost all of it leaves the country. In fact, it sometimes leaves and comes back here again. Spain is Europe's bio vegetable garden," he insists. So as to change this balance, for almost six years the company has given priority to local produce.
The latest warehouse is large enough to accommodate the company's growth. Ceded
There are various reasons why local produce is destined for export. On the one hand, the domestic market is "still young compared with that in the north and is 10 years behind," which means that most of the demand is higher in other parts of the continent. Moreover, prices have a direct influence. Here, the cost of a kilo of fruit or a bag of organic cereal is much higher, at a price that the consumer is not always willing to pay.
Can Sala, a space to disengage
The rural guest house in Sant Martí de Llémena (Gironès), opened alongside Biospirit, is the second part of the founders' original project. "Not because if you only eat organic you will be healthier, the most important thing is to have a food base. To explain that, we set up this rural guesthouse," says Sturm.
The house has been renovated to turn it into tourist accommodation. Ceded
Can Sala is a fortified country house from the 12th century and is surrounded by greenery. It is on a 165-hectare estate and is registered as a Cultural Asset of National Interest. Since it was acquired, it has been remodelled with organic materials to become a tourist dwelling "to promote physical and emotional wellbeing." It has almost 40 beds, a kitchen garden where a large part of the food served is grown, and a number of springs that fill the stone swimming pool with natural water and where the water consumed in the house is taken from.
While the project does not make much money, "perhaps because we have not been able to give all the attention it needs", the new management wants to provide it with more attention and turn into an important pillar of the group, not simply for it to be "a project of the heart."