Frozen Food Entrepreneur Volkmar Frenzel
Dies at 58 After Battle with Lung Cancer

Volkmar Frenzel April 4, 1953- Sept. 12, 2011 Rest in Peace

Death has claimed the man who built a small ice cream delivery service in Communist East Germany (DDR) into reunited Germany’s third largest producer of frozen vegetables. Volkmar Frenzel, a recipient of Quick Frozen Food International’s Golden Ice Crystal award, has succumbed to lung cancer on Sept. 12 at the age of 58.

Before he suffered reverses, Frenzel operated three frozen food plants in the former East Germany; at his home town of Choren, about halfway between Leipzig and Dresden, at Ringleben, west of Leipzig, and at Manschnow, near the Polish border. At its peak the firm, with 350 employees, was producing 126 frozen products; vegetables, fruits, potato specialties ready meals and ice cream. They were distributed to retailers and wholesalers with a fleet of 20 refrigerated semi-trailers and six delivery trucks. The company also exported to 15 countries.

From his youth Frenzel, an apprenticed butcher, had dreamed of having his own business. But he was in East Germany, clearly the wrong place at the wrong time. His parents managed a state-owned supermarket, however, and he was able to go to the bureaucrats who controlled it and apply for a permit to privately operate an ice cream truck. He miraculously got the permit and started his business in 1981 in the Döbeln-Torgau-Dresden area, his home region of Saxony. He had one refrigerated truck, a small refrigerated warehouse and one of only a very few private businesses in East Germany.

Then came reunification and opportunity. Frenzel immediately sought to become a distributor of western ice cream, and, in the spring of 1990, drove his truck to the Nürnberg headquarters of Schöller ice cream. This was very early in the game, and presented problems. Though the border was open, formal reunification was still some months away. Among other things he had no deutschemarks with which to buy gasoline. He had to take enough fuel for the whole trip with him in jerry cans.

Schöller took him on as a distributor, and he quickly did very well. Western ice cream, though much more expensive, was far superior to that which was supplied by the communist state, and the people clamored for it. Soon he began to freeze as well as distribute products, and was so successful that he was able to buy the Ringleben plant in 1997 and the Manschow plant a year later. Both are in farming areas and were able to freeze within hours of harvest.

As one of the leading entrepreneurs from the former DDR, he received numerous prizes – including Quick Frozen Food International magazine’s prestigious Golden Ice Crystal Award for lifetime achievement and pioneering new markets – and joined the German chancellor on economic missions to Japan and the Persian Gulf.

Things began to go downhill for the company in 2005, with the purchase of Austria Frost, a troubled frozen food company located near Vienna. The venture was not successful and the company had to be sold three years later at a loss of 7 million euros. At around the same time the Manschnow plant ran into trouble after flooding in the region led to a crop failure. All three Frenzel firms filed for bankruptcy in early 2011. Much of the operation has been taken over by FZ-Foods AG, a subsidiary of KTG Agrar AG, and products will continue to be marketed with the Frenzel brand name.

Frenzel is survived by two sons.