The Pöschl Tobacco Group is the world's largest producer of snuff and Germany's leading independent tobacco manufacturer. Now in its fourth generation of family ownership, the company posted annual revenues exceeding €790 million in 2024. Around 400 staff are based at its headquarters in Geisenhausen, Bavaria.

Email is the lifeblood of communication at Pöschl, particularly for the sales team. But as mailboxes grew increasingly unwieldy, with some ballooning to 50 GB, there was no reliable way to archive email traffic in a legally compliant, audit-proof manner. With an ISO 27001 certification also on the horizon, IT management made the decision to implement a professional email archiving solution. Patrick Leipold, IT Systems Administrator at Pöschl Tabak, highlights not just the compliance benefits but also the tangible day-to-day performance gains:

EMA's full-text indexing delivers an incredibly powerful search — especially because attachments are scanned too. Staff can simply search for an article number from a quote that happens to appear in an attached PDF, for instance. Our experience is clear: if you can remember anything at all about the email you're looking for, EMA will get you there.

Legally Compliant Archiving of Email Communications

After evaluating several options, Pöschl chose EMA from ARTEC IT Solutions. Following a trial period and consultancy from ARTEC partner Advanced UniByte, the solution was deployed on-premises — a deliberate choice, given that Pöschl operates two of its own data centres. All inbound and outbound emails are archived automatically and in full legal compliance. To safeguard data protection, a four-eyes principle applies for sensitive access cases, meaning the works council is automatically involved.

Beyond regulatory compliance, the solution has delivered clear performance gains in everyday work. Staff access the archive via a browser link, which was another intentional decision by the company. This means that anyone searching for a specific email can run an archive search while still keeping their folder structure in view within their email client.

A Real Weight off It’s Shoulders

The introduction of EMA has also brought noticeable relief to Pöschl's roughly twenty-strong IT department. Previously, accidentally moved or deleted emails had to be painstakingly restored by IT staff, which for older messages could mean loading tape backups. Now, employees can simply retrieve those emails themselves through the archive, quickly and without fuss.

As a next step, Pöschl plans to deploy a second EMA appliance as a hot standby. In the event of a temporary data centre outage, operations can be switched over to the second unit, ensuring high availability.