A taste for success Vandemoortele Group

A TASTE

FOR SUCCESS

The Vandemoortele Group is setting standards in taste, with its margarines, oils, dressings, bread and pastry products finding their way onto kitchen tables across Europe every day. Julia Snow reports on the company’s own taste for market leadership and growth.

Vandemoortele is developing and marketing frozen bakery products and margarines and fats, delivered as ingredients and semi-finished products to professional users, and as finished products to end-consumers.

Founded in 1899, and as a family-controlled concern with Belgian roots, Vandemoortele has a distinctly European outlook. The group has a head office in Ghent, Belgium, and sales organisation and production facilities spread across 12 European countries. The company occupies a leading position in the two core businesses and realised a revenue of around €1.1 billion in 2010, with 5100 employees working in 36 production and 15 commercial sites. The aim is to expand these through organic and external growth, based on operational excellence, innovation and a clear customer focus.

Lipids product portfolio

In Lipids, the company targets both the professional users with a broad portfolio of products that combine processability, taste, texture and high nutritional standards, and also the retailers with private label margarines and frying fats.

Vandemoortele markets a number of strong margarines, oils and dressing brands in Belgium such as Vandemoortele®, Alpro® soya (licensed by Alpro) and Vitelma®, as well as Diamant in Holland and Sojola in Germany. A host of different products are available for the needs of modern artisan bakeries and the catering sector, and industrial clients can choose from an extensive range of standard as well as customised products.

Frozen bakery products portfolio

Valdemoortele produces a wide range of bread, pastry, doughnuts, muffins, cookies and patisserie for professional users in the bakery and food service industries as well as for retailers.

The concept Croustifrance was developed for local supermarkets as a total package based on full service, training and follow-up. With Les Pains Pérènes de Roland Cottes, Vandemoortele offers a unique range of bread specialities, and a popular classic bread range

is sold under the brand name Banquet d’Or. The driving force behind the American range The Originals is the doughnuts that are sold in more than 20 European countries. As European market leader Vandemoortele produces more than one million doughnuts each day.

Refining the focus

The corporate objectives of the group were re-modelled in the decade between 1998 and 2008. The upstream activities (crushing and refining) and the non-Belgian oil bottling and mayonnaise production activities were closed down, and the focus was placed on three core activities of soy foods, lipids and bakery. Acquisitions brought Cottes France (artisan bread in 2004), Colombus Food Belgium (doughnuts in 2004), SoFine Foods Holland (tofu and meat replacers in 2006), Erkens Bakkerijen Holland (patisserie in 2006) and Gourmand Poland (bread and pastries in 2007) into the group.

The biggest acquisition followed in 2008 with Panavi, the French market leader in frozen bakery products. With a turnover of €307 million, 22 factories, 17 distribution centres and over 2000 employees, this takeover was a crucial step in Vandemoortele’s strategy to position the group among the key players in Europe.

Divestment followed by capital injection

In order to fully concentrate on bakery products and lipids, which represent 80 per cent of the group’s turnover, Vandemoortele announced it’s intention to sell the consumerfocused Alpro soya division early in 2009. Just five months later the Dean Foods Company acquired Alpro for approximately €325 million.

The decision to divest Alpro was quickly followed by a major capital injection: in March 2009 Gimv and Vandemoortele announced an investment of €75 million in the food group. Jean Vandemoortele, president of the executive committee of the group, commented: “With this capital injection, we have taken another important step after the takeover of the French group Panavi. Gimv’s minority stake strengthens our equity, enabling us to realise growth plans in the divisions of frozen bakery and margarines and fats.”

In 2010, Vandemoortele took a further step in its international expansion by acquiring Van Dijk Zeewolde, a company with €138 million turnover. With this acquisition, the Lipids division strengthened its leading position on the European market and achieved a turnover which is comparable to that of the bakery products division. “Thanks to this acquisition, we are able to consolidate our Dutch and European position, as well as scale size at production level and join forces in sales,” said Jean Vandemoortele.

A taste for growth

Vandemoortele has been a member of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil since 2009, and in October 2011 the group reinforced its commitment to cover all of its needs with 100 per cent certified palm oil by 2015. Two months later came a move to strengthen the Dutch market position: the acquisition of the Remia brand of liquid deep frying fats for retail, while selling the sauce brand Gouda’s Glorie to Remia. Through these takeovers, both companies have become the biggest brand suppliers in Holland in the fields of sauces and deep frying fats respectively.

In the future, the group will continue its path of steady growth, even against the backdrop of the uncertain financial situation in some European countries and increasing commodity prices. Owing to strict cost control and further rationalisation of the production chain, combined with a dynamic commercial organisation, investment in ongoing training and sustained R&D efforts, the group is confident it will be able to achieve the mid-term objectives of further turnover growth and improved profitability. n