Trip down memory lane: addition of convenience.

The market for convenience food products has grown enormously in recent decades. This discipline now also plays an important role for DERO GROEP. In our series of anniversary stories, this time we explain how we ended up in the convenience food industry.

"After the acquisition of ELTEN in 2012, our activities in the cheese industry grew so rapidly that we actually needed and wanted to grow faster than was realistically possible," recalls Maro Dedel, CEO and founder of DERO GROEP. "In order to increase our clout and offer our customers the most comprehensive product range possible, we acquired a stake in BOSGRAAF in 2014. Their years of experience and knowledge in building cheese pressing systems, among other things, were a perfect addition to our product portfolio." A year later, BOSGRAAF was fully acquired, including its premises in Joure.

Nowadays, we offer a wide range of automatic lines and modules for assembling convenience food products.

"The acquisition not only expanded our cheese portfolio, but also opened the doors to a whole new market," Maro continues. "That of convenience foods. In Joure, they had already developed products for this industry. These include dosing machines such as egg slicers, sauce dispensers, and bread supply systems, as well as unique, fully automated lines for assembling sandwiches, small bread and wraps. Combined with DERO's robotics expertise, this offered many opportunities and access to markets that were previously unknown to DERO. All in all, it was a very valuable addition to our offering for the food industry, which was until then mainly focused on cheese and bakeries."

From that moment on, BOSGRAAF's many years of experience in the food industry and accumulated knowledge of hygienic design and smart mechanisms could be combined with DERO and ELTEN's expertise in robotics and cheese processing, creating a powerful mix of ideas, clout, entrepreneurship, and innovation. "This formed the basis of our success when we continued together as DERO GROEP," explains Maro. "Since then, we have further developed existing convenience solutions and brought new innovations to the market, such as the bread denester, cutting unit for wraps, and small bread cutting machine. This also gave us access to the ready-made salad market, which led to the development of hygienic pick-and-place solutions such as the sachet feeder."

The first sachet feeder we supplied.

"What started out as a kind of by-product – to put it that way – of the acquisition of BOSGRAAF has grown over the years into an important part of our product range," says Maro. "With the acquisition, we not only gained expertise and solutions for the convenience industry, but we also gained access to a new market and new customers." Thanks to the branch in Joure, convenience has grown into a fully-fledged discipline within DERO GROEP, and this location is still the beating heart of these activities, where we proudly continue to build the future of the food industry.

// P. Mulder - Synergy Food  //