Prune to Grow: Inside Benary’s Sixth Generation

Matthias Redlefsen has spent the last two decades as the CEO and owner of Benary. The 180-year-old seed company is now in its sixth generation of ownership — his by marriage to Klaudia Benary, the family heir, and by his own design in building the business further. This July marks 20 years since the couple took over together.

Klaudia’s role is less visible than her husband’s: she oversees the family and chairs Benary’s supervisory board. Redlefsen’s role, on the other hand, is more forward-facing and focused on the business itself. When he first stepped into his new role, he saw an opportunity to “prune” the family tree, a move he says makes Benary more competitive than other seed breeders.

“We reduced the number of shareholders in the company,” he explains. “Despite the fact that we’re a 180-year-old company, we’ve been able to maintain a very narrow shareholding.”

Fewer shareholders means fewer people to bring to consensus, which means faster decisions. Benary may not match its competitors’ financial resources, but speed has its own competitive advantage.

“We’ve built our strategy around defining ourselves as a speedboat amongst the tankers,” Redlefsen says.

It’s an instinct he brought with him, not one he discovered on the job. Before joining Benary, Redlefsen spent more than 10 years as a succession planner, advising other family businesses through the same kind of transition he would later live himself.

Taking on the Family Business

Consulting a business and running one are two very different things. As a succession planner, Redlefsen didn’t experience the emotional attachment that people intimately involved in a business do. But the lessons he carried from that work would matter more than he expected when he took over the Benary business.

“One of the key lessons that I’ve always tried to promote and live up to is setting clarity about what people can expect,” he explains. “If there’s one thing that is dangerous in a succession situation, it’s disappointed expectations.”

During his time as a consultant, he found that people handle hardship much better than they handle disappointment. The hardship-disappointment distinction gave him a clear framework for advising others. But nothing fully prepared him for what it would feel like to sit in the owner’s seat himself.

“When I was in the game myself, I was overwhelmed, especially as the in-law,” he says. “You have six generations on canvas looking down on you, and you feel all the responsibility of previous generations and how they’ve managed to succeed. You don’t want to be the one who switches the light off.”

That weight came into sharper focus once he confronted his own family’s story. Over the last 180 years, the company has weathered several major crises. Before narrowing the company’s shareholders from a business strategy perspective, the family tree had already been pruned for other reasons.

“Our company history is very much tied to the German history,” Redlefsen explains. “The founder of the business was Jewish, but despite his conversion to Christian faith, there were times throughout history that were tricky to deal with. There was a prosecution of family members and some were sent to war and did not return.”

For Redlefsen, pruning the family tree for business reasons versus having it pruned by force aren’t the same—but they aren’t unrelated, either. The instinct toward smaller, unified, and committed ownership is shaped by a family that has already lived through losing people and the choice in how it happens. Because of this, Benary has managed to turn the hardship into a virtue.

“These experiences have made us tough,” he says. “Every crisis we’ve gone through, we’ve been able to reinvent the company over and over again.”

Navigating Business Challenges

That resilience shows up clearly in how Benary handles the slow, uncertain nature of seed breeding. Since 2006, Redlefsen has grappled with a business where the company is currently working with products it won’t release until 15 years from now.

“Seed breeding takes years, and at the same time you don’t know what the world will look like in a year from now,” he says. “Keeping those two timelines in sync is something I find especially challenging.”

That’s why Benary remains flexible, entrepreneurial, and agile—not as words on a wall, but as something woven into the company’s culture.

“These things are so important to us because we’re a global company,” he explains. “We can’t afford to have hierarchies, and everyone, no matter where he or she is located, must know what to work toward so they can act in a given framework.”

But that challenge is faced by all horticulture companies, not Benary alone. Each company must find its own way through.

Reflecting on Benary’s Accomplishments

Ask Redlefsen where his biggest achievements lie, and he doesn’t point to shareholder count or product timelines, but to Benary’s mission.

“While growing plants and growing our business is what we do, growing people is what we’re really here for,” he explains. “That gives me a great sense of gratitude.”

For a family that has done its fair share of pruning, both chosen and forced, growth is the word Redlefsen has chosen to lead with. Almost two centuries after the Benary name was first put to seed, the company is still standing. Under Redlefsen, it has also become leaner by design and measures its future in who grows, not just what.