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“It is with great sadness that we announce that Rozi Horváth, the brand’s namesake, is no longer with us,” reported Világgazdaság. “Rozi Horváth put her heart and soul into the spice blends she made and the recipes that made many family tables special,” the brand announced on its Facebook page. Mindmegette, a site known for sharing cooking recipies has published a thorough compilation of her life.
The namesake of the well-known spice brand passed away at the age of 86. Rozi Horváth was born in Tolmács in 1939 as Ilona Drozgyik. She received the surname Horváth through her husband, Lajos Horváth. She originally wanted to be a fashion designer, but she could not put her drawing skills to good use in this field because the chosen textile design major at college was not available. In the beginning, she worked as a porcelain painter and technical draftsman.
“Her marriage brought a turning point in her life, as she accompanied her husband to North Africa, Algeria, for his work. Here she learned about spices and the French language, enjoyed experimenting with special spice combinations, and became a true housewife with the help of a French cookbook. They returned to Hungary from Algeria in 1974. Then, in 1985, one of her husband’s friends visited them, and the spice rack in the kitchen fell off. The ensuing exchange of words gave Ilona the idea to work with spices. It wasn’t long before her own brand was launched in 1993,” the post reads.
The Hungarian-born, now more of an Austrian spice company, Kotányi invested mainly in the Central and Eastern European markets from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. They later started expanding into Germany and Russia.
The namesake of the well-known Horváth Rozi spice brand retired in 2002, and in the same year, Kotányi acquired the Horváth Rozi product line.
The brand, which started with a common spice in Hungary, paprika, now offers nearly 4,500 types of spices in 54 countries. The Hungarian subsidiary of the Vienna-based company, Kotányi Hungary, founded in 1992, now covers one-third of the domestic spice market. The Hungarian subsidiary has grown into a company with sales of 4.7 billion forints (11.7 million euros). It further established its western expansion when it opened a new logistics center in Wolkersdorf to serve customers in Austria, Germany, and Italy.
In addition to long-term cooperation, the secret is that we have been paying farmers fairly for 140 years, and our partners trust us. The spice business was generally a very closed market for a long time.
They didn’t really let new players in easily. In this sector, for example, deals are still made without necessarily having a written contract in advance that regulates everything precisely. Here, the given word creates the bond,” said Márta Galácz, managing director of Kotányi Hungária, emphasizing that this is the company’s philosophy.
Via Világgazdaság; Featured picture: Pexels