When Lærke Tang Münsberg is not spending time on her BEng programme at DTU, she can be found twice a week among huge pots and large steel tanks filled with scalding liquorice pulp in Bagsværd Lakrids' minifactory on the main street in Bagsværd. Here she develops new products in collaboration with the business' CEO, Morten Kornbech Larsen.
Lærke Tang Münsberg is currently developing a liquorice cream that will go perfectly with ice cream. She tests textures and flavours and looks at how the liquorice cream mixes with the ice cream, measures ingredients, weighs them, and starts all over again—all to achieve the perfect liquorice cream.
"I typically arrive in the afternoon, and my working day is then spent dealing with all the ideas Morten throws at me. It's fun, exciting, and challenging to boil an idea down to a single product, and I'm getting good at juggling all the details of the process," she explains.
The challenge for Lærke Tang Münsberg is finding the right consistency and flavour, which only occurs when the liquorice cream mixes with the ice cream. When she and Morten Kornbech Larsen are happy with the result, the liquorice cream is ready to be sold in the little shop which is also part of Bagsværd Lakrids' factory—as well as by the 750 dealers that today carry Bagsværd Lakrids' products.
From student to co-developer
Turning the clock back to autumn 2020, Lærke Tang Münsberg had just graduated from high school and was looking for a full-time job before starting a six-month stay at a folk high school and prior to enrolling at DTU. She chose Bagsværd Lakrids, which needed a full-time employee who wanted to learn all about how to make liquorice the old-fashioned way.
"It's great to get so much experience. I started at the entry level packing liquorice, I was then trained as a liquorice maker, and now I help make new products as a co-developer," she says.
Morten Kornbech Larsen is also happy working together with Lærke Tang Münsberg and seeing her progress. "One of the first things I noticed about Lærke was her big commitment. She took ownership of her tasks from day one and has done so with every promotion. She's a self-starter and takes responsibility, which is much appreciated at Bagsværd Lakrids," he says.
For Lærke Tang Münsberg, the title of co-developer is a good and educational supplement to her studies at DTU.
"As a co-developer, I deep-dive far more into the details of a production than in my study programme, where the focus is on the overall framework of a production. So, the combination of the two is just perfect," she explains.
When Lærke Tang Münsberg graduates as a manufacturing and management engineer, she will be able to manage and develop companies' production chains—right from the choice of suppliers to the introduction of new digital production forms.
As a manufacturing and management engineer, she can—for example—contribute to creating a more competitive, responsible, and sustainable production by developing and optimizing company processes and workflows.
