EQS-News: Michael Grosse to succeed Joachim Kreuzburg as Chief Executive Officer of Sartorius AG

Michael Grosse to succeed Joachim Kreuzburg as Chief Executive Officer of Sartorius AG
 

• Grosse to take over as Group CEO on July 1, 2025

At its meeting today, the Supervisory Board of Sartorius AG appointed Dr. Michael Grosse Chief Executive Officer of Sartorius. He will take over this position on July 1, 2025, from Dr. Joachim Kreuzburg, who will continue to lead the company until that time. The appointment is the result of a selection process that started in the summer of 2024, after Kreuzburg had announced that, after more than two decades as CEO, he would not seek another renewal of his contract, which expires in November 2025.

The Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Dr. Lothar Kappich, commented: ”Joachim Kreuzburg's track record after 22 years at the helm of the company is unparalleled. With his dynamic entrepreneurial personality, he has transformed Sartorius into a life science tools company and led the company amongst the top of global players of this segment. During his term of office, Sartorius’ value increased tremendously while numerous new jobs were created. Following Mr. Kreuzburg’s early notice, we were able to organize a well-structured succession process which was successfully concluded with the appointment of Mr. Grosse. Michael Grosse has impressively demonstrated his operational and strategic skills across a range of industries and business models, and his openness, persistence and focus on results are an excellent match with the Sartorius culture. I am now very much looking forward to working together with Mr. Kreuzburg and our successful Executive Board for another six months, and then to welcoming Mr. Grosse to Sartorius next July.”

Joachim Kreuzburg said: ”Sartorius is a truly unique company with an outstanding positioning and a great team. In the coming months, we will work together with all our energy to ensure that the company continues to develop more innovatively, faster, and more profitably than the competition. I am pleased that in Mr. Grosse such a convincing personality has been found as my successor.”

Michael Grosse, designated Chief Executive Officer, said: ”Sartorius is a strongly positioned company in one of the most relevant industries of the future. The company has a powerful mission, and I look very much forward to contributing to the progress in the biopharma industry with this successful team in a few months’ time.“
About Dr. Michael Grosse
Dipl.-Ing. Michael Grosse (57) holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering and has held various management and board positions in the packaging industry for the pharmaceutical and food sector over the past 20 years. From 2020 to 2023, he was Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive Officer of Syntegon Technology GmbH, an international market leader in process and packaging solutions based in Germany, which was spun off from the Bosch Group in 2019. Prior to that, Grosse worked for the Swiss company Tetra Pak for many years, where he became a member of the Executive Board in 2006, and where he was responsible for the expansion of the global service business and held various management positions in product development. Before joining Tetra Pak, Grosse worked in the automotive industry at BMW and Ford.
About Dr. Joachim Kreuzburg
Dipl.-Ing. Joachim Kreuzburg, who earned his doctorate in environmental economics, has been at the helm of Sartorius since 2003, making him currently the longest-serving CEO of a Dax 40 company. After joining the company in 1999, he was appointed to the Executive Board in 2002 at the age of 37 and CEO a few months later. During his tenure, Sartorius’ sales increased more than 7-fold to around EUR 3.4 billion, profits more than 26-fold to just under EUR 1 billion, the number of employees quadrupled to almost 14,000, while the Group’s stock market valuation rose from just over EUR 90 million to just over EUR 14 billion. Kreuzburg is a member of the Supervisory Board of Carl Zeiss AG, a non-executive director on the Board of Directors of Ottobock Management SE, and a member of the Senate of the Max Planck Society.
A profile of Sartorius
Sartorius is a leading international partner of life sciences research and the biopharmaceutical industry. With innovative laboratory instruments and consumables, the Group’s Lab Products & Services Division focuses on laboratories performing research and quality control at pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies as well as academic research institutes. The Bioprocess Solutions Division, with its broad product portfolio focusing on single-use solutions, helps customers manufacture biotech medications, vaccines, and cell and gene therapies safely, rapidly, and economically. The company, based in Göttingen, Germany, has a strong global reach with around 60 production and sales sites worldwide. Sartorius regularly expands its portfolio through the acquisition of complementary technologies. In 2023, the company generated sales revenue of around 3.4 billion euros. Currently, around 14,000 employees are working for customers around the globe.

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