Claudia Willvonseder

Happy to be here. My topic was AI in Action.

Yes, we definitely use AI, especially in several pilots across many different areas of the company. The areas I'm responsible for are sustainability, marketing, and research and development, and we've been running quite a few AI pilots there for some time now. Very naturally in the area of marketing, where it's about targeting, personalization, and automation. But also — and this is a very exciting topic — strongly in product development, where it's really about food technologies. Our industry is truly being absolutely disrupted by technology. We really want to understand how AI can help us not only better understand consumer needs but also accelerate recipe generation and time-to-market in product development. Like I said, we have several tests running that we then evaluate against each other.

At Dr. Oetker, it started a bit later, admittedly. We come from a very decentralized organizational structure, so data harmonization and creating large data lakes was really a challenge, because we initially didn't have a single view of truth, and generating that took a bit longer than perhaps at the company you spoke with before. And that's naturally important with AI — you really need absolutely harmonized, robust data, because otherwise it's really rubbish in, rubbish out in all areas. That's a core element, and it did take some time for us. And we're admittedly still not done with the harmonization.

We've done this relatively organically — or rather, we're in the process of doing it organically. Naturally, when we bring new people into the company, there's also a focus on whether these people have competencies in handling data — data engineering, data analytics. We've hired more in those areas, but it wasn't a progressive program; it was really through organic change. And we've really committed to a lot of learning and upskilling of our own employees. They're very curious about working with new technologies and want to set up learning programs, so that, for example, colleagues in R&D naturally also learn alongside their core competency — which is very often food chemistry — the digital and data topics as well. That might take a bit longer, but it naturally also helps strengthen the corporate culture and avoid an 'old school, new school' way of thinking and working, and potentially a culture clash between those who are really data-driven and working with AI and those who grew up in the classic areas of the company.

Of course, the regulations in the EU are relatively strict, especially compared to other countries you mentioned. What we wish for in general is that innovation is supported and that collaboration with startups is made easier through faster approvals. Of course, as a company, especially in the food sector, compliance is also very important — it's really about food safety. These are products we create that people then really eat and consume. So the topic of safety and compliance is very important, which we fully respect. We come from the DNA that 'quality is the best recipe,' so it's naturally very inherent to us to be compliant and ensure safety and quality assurance. What we really wish for is an innovation culture and the ability to collaborate with startups to perhaps bring new, unusual products to market faster and gain speed that way.

Of course, the energy prices — which especially began with the war in Ukraine — are naturally a driver for cost increases that we, like all producing companies, have to manage. For example, we produce frozen pizza. You can imagine that a lot of energy is used both for baking and for freezing and storage. Dr. Oetker has invested heavily in renewable energies and also very much in our own facilities to become more independent and more sustainable. That's a very large line item for our investments.

I'm a positive, curious problem-solver, so I really have great hope that German politics and the regulators will see that we need to implement changes faster in Germany to once again become a real pioneer in engineering and a force that makes us a leader in new technologies, in digitalization, and in artificial intelligence. And I wish — we wish — that a lot changes there and that the culture for renewal is significantly accelerated.

Thank you.