Chr. Hansen

The company is named for its founder, Christian D. A. Hansen, a pioneering Danish chemist whose work focused on enzymes. Hansen began the company in 1874 as a joint venture with pharmacist H.P. Madsen.

Initial products included animal rennet for cheese-making as well as annatto-based coloring agents for butter and cheese. Operations in the United States were begun in 1878. Their lines soon expanded to include starter cultures for cheese, yogurt and sour cream. In 1890 Hansen purchased an island for a manufacturing facility on the Mohawk River of New York and named it Hansen Island. Hansen's son Johannes took over the company in 1916 upon his father's death. That same year, the company began production in England to bypass the German World War I blockade of exports to Great Britain and beyond. Facilities in Italy and Germany followed in 1936 during the inter-war period. By 1951, Hansen began production in Australia. Further international expansion in places such as South America followed, and from the 1970s to the 1990s saw a period of acquisition of other firms. The company released its first probiotic in 1987. In 1991, the Lundbeck Foundation obtained majority control of the company and initiated a major restructuring into a holding company format. Additional growth and consolidation followed, and Chr. Hansen Group was spun off into a separate, independent company in May 2005 which allowed the company to focus on long-term growth strategies rather than quarterly goals.