History
In around 1916, the company was set up as a retailer for butter, eggs, cheese and brooms. Soon after, fresh poultry was added to the range.
In 1931, the wholesaler was registered as “Heinrich Nolten sen.” In 1948, the company was entered into the commercial register as “Heinrich Nolten sen. OHG”.
As one of the pioneers in the growing market for frozen products, the company added frozen and deep-frozen products to its range in 1965.
In the mid-1970s, the company established itself as a broker in the food sector and undertook the logistic bundling of frozen product ranges on behalf of the food retail trade. At that time, the company’s vehicle fleet was already used in long-distance traffic for the Germany-wide delivery of consignments.
From the early 1990s, the company operated a central warehouse or respectively regional centre for the home delivery service provider “eismann”.
The company continued to flourish: in 1990, it moved its main office to Niederkrüchten and from 1991 has been trading as “WILMS Tiefkühl-Service GmbH”. 1992 saw the doubling of the company’s warehousing capacity. In 1996 and 1997, two distribution centres hubs were set up in East Germany.
The process of business succession began in 1998 with the appointment of Markus Wilms and Armin Feemers as partners. Concurrent with German discounters entering the frozen food market, WILMS Tiefkühl-Service further increased its frozen storage capacities. In the same year, the company acquired an EC licence for their transport division.
In 1999, WILMS Tiefkühl-Service built a deep-freeze distribution centre in Niederkrüchten. In 2001, the company entered the ambient logistics market (plus 18 °C) as the third temperature range in addition to frozen and chilled. In the same year, the company set up a branch office for city logistics south of Berlin.
In 2003, WILMS Tiefkühl-Service introduced paperless order picking. Thanks to voice picking, a further reduction in the already low number of errors associated with the order picking of outer cartons and bulky good has been was made possible. In 2004 , the ERP System ‘SoftM Suite’ replaced the previous WMS and other software systems.
In 2007, Markus Wilms and Armin Feemers are appointed Managing Directors alongside Mrs Gerdamarie Feemers, a Managing Director of many years and now Chairman of the Board of Management.
In December 2009, the company further expanded its haulage business, transferring this business unit into the newly established WILMS Transport GmbH.
From January 2010, WILMS Transport GmbH has taken over all haulage within the WILMS group of companies.
In 2017 the group of companies celebrates its centenary with all employees and their families with a lavish party in the hangar of Mönchengladbach Airport.