Since 2023, the HEINZ Group has been a partner of UnternehmerTUM. The family business, now led by its third and fourth generation, is based in Moosburg an der Isar and brings over 90 years of experience in waste management and the circular economy, as well as transport and logistics. The HEINZ Group combines tradition with innovation and aims to help shape its industry's future. To do so, it deliberately opens itself up to new partnerships and outside innovation.
Josef Heinz, Managing Director of the HEINZ Group, sums up the goal:
"Working with UnternehmerTUM is above all about looking beyond our core industries and getting a leadership-level sense of the developments that could shape the economy over the next three to four years. We want to keep building on this exchange with academia and universities in the years ahead."
Concrete results: how the HEINZ Group uses the ecosystem
Through the FamilienUnternehmerTUM partnership, the HEINZ Group taps into the innovation ecosystem in a targeted way: it drives its AI transformation forward with the AI accelerator for medium-sized companies, run together with appliedAI, including a first jointly implemented use case; it gains access to relevant startups and experts in the circular economy; and it exchanges ideas with other family businesses across industries on topics such as startup collaborations and investment.
Josef Heinz serves as a mentor at the high-tech accelerator XPRENEURS. There, he met Twogee, an XPRENEURS alumnus offering tailored enzyme solutions for the industrial use of biomass. Heinz Ventures GmbH invested in the company's seed round, an investment that grew directly out of the ecosystem. With Heinz Ventures GmbH, the HEINZ Group has built a corporate venture arm to invest in strategically relevant startups in biotech, recycling, and the circular economy, serving as both a trend radar and a basis for new strategic partnerships.
Otto Georg Heinz, responsible for sales and organizational development, drives forward the company's AI and digitalization transformation and takes part in the current cohort of NextGen4Bavaria, a program run by the Bavarian State Ministry for Digital Affairs that prepares business successors for their future role and supports them in the strategic development of their companies. Gloria Heinz, responsible for marketing and communications, strengthens the HEINZ Group's visibility among tomorrow's talent, including through a 2025 visit from the Family Business Club @TUM in Moosburg, which brings together the next generation and students interested in family businesses.
The HEINZ Group shows the value that can emerge on both sides when family businesses think strategically about innovation ecosystems and actively get involved, from strategic knowledge transfer to investment to developing the next generation.
Want to use UnternehmerTUM's innovation ecosystem strategically as a family business?
Contact our representatives at FamilienUnternehmerTUM directly:
