their little weaknesses, about births and marriages, has heard
many of their life stories. In some families, four generations
have already worked for Mennekes. “Every single employee
is important – from the man who sweeps the yard to the de-
velopment engineer,” says Walter Mennekes, who invites
around 100 children and teenagers from the region each year
to attend a three-day football camp.
The entrepreneur is passionate about football and has attended
at least one match from every World Cup in the stadium
since 1974. It was a roundabout route that led the man from
the Sauerland to the advisory board of FC Bayern Munich,
though his version – “I must have done such a good job on
the board of FC Kirchhundem that FC Bayern noticed me” –
does not hold water.
More likely it was a case of Walter Mennekes being attentive
once again. At the quarter finals of the 1986 World Cup be-
tween Germany and Mexico, he brought a young woman and
her children something to drink in the stands during half time
in the heat of Monterrey. What Mennekes didn’t know was
that on this day, 21 June, the captain of the German team
was the children’s father. He was Karl-Heinz Rummenigge,
and the encounter was the start of a long friendship with the
family and strong ties with FC Bayern that was to lead Walter
Mennekes to many other football stands.
SMEs, then we can’t be such a secret,” proclaims the long-
standing member of the Advisory Committee of Hamburg’s
GET Nord trade fair. “Not all world champions come from
Berlin, Hamburg or Munich. And because no one comes out
to us in the boondocks, we have to go out into the world
with our products,” says the cosmopolitan from Kirchhun-
dem. The use of “we” here is deliberate because Walter
Mennekes prefers to present his products in conjunction
with others – in “Team Germany” under the brand Made
in Germany. “This is synonymous with sustainability and
quality,” says the entrepreneur. Mennekes has a workforce of
1,000, more than two-thirds of whom are in Germany. Cor-
porate headquarters are in Kirchhundem in the Sauerland.
Mennekes has other production facilities in Neudorf in the
Erzgebirge and in Nanjing, China, which produces exclusively
for the Chinese market.
TEAMWORK, discipline, fairness, enthusiasm and inter-
nationality – Walter Mennekes himself has many Olympic
virtues, which is why it makes sense for him to take respon-
sibility in his native region. There is hardly a club in the 37
villages that make up the municipality of Kirchhundem with
its 12,300 inhabitants that is not supported by him and the
Mennekes Group, from the youth club to the rabbit breeders
to the sports club.
Walter Mennekes claims this social commitment has noth-
ing to do with sentimentality. “You generally get back much
more than you put in,” says the entrepreneur, who can name
every single employee on his rounds of the factory. He knows
✱ ✱ ✱
EU Commissioner Günther Oettinger
(2nd left) on a visit to the MENNEKES
head office in Kirchhundem, examining
a charging station for electric cars.
✱ ✱ ✱
MENNEKES – Plugs for the world. MENNEKES
plugs and connectors are high-quality products
that the company sells worldwide.
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Hamburg Messe und Congress | Annual Report 2014
PROFILE