A lot has changed since Søren Lukassen joined his father's company at the age of 20. Right now, the snack company is moving to larger premises to keep up with the rapid growth, which has not always been commonplace. "Now we're getting paid back again," he says.
The new premises have been built to accommodate Nordthy's rapid growth. Double-digit growth rates have characterized the company since 2015, when Nordthy launched its own brand, which today accounts for 70% of the business, says Søren Lukassen, who runs the company with his brother Lars Lukassen.
"It takes a few years to shut everything down and move on to the other side, but it has gone really fast in the last four years." - Søren Lukassen, Director and owner, Nordthy.
In addition to the company's own brand, the remaining business consists of 10% private label, where Nordthy delivers to e.g. Netto and Rema 1000, while 20% comes from sales of other products via agency agreements.
Started with cake trucks 53 years ago
Although Søren Lukassen and Lars Lukassen are following in their father's footsteps, Nordthy is a long way from where their father Børge Lukassen started 53 years ago. Back then, Børge Lukassen started driving around with cake trucks, selling to the local shops in Thy.
Over the years, the business grew, with several cake vans covering the whole of North Jutland. "We were the last wholesalers left in Denmark with mobile sales vehicles. By then we had bought up 12-14 colleagues," recalls 53-year-old Søren Lukassen, who started working for the company at the age of 20. "But the chains started taking more and more things into their own central warehouses, and it was all much more top-down. At the turn of the millennium, we started to get an agency in Europe, because we could see that the journey with the sales vehicles would end at some point," says Søren Lukassen.
"There have been some not-so-fun years, and now we're getting paid back again."
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