"Salads are very popular at the moment," says Marleen De Tant, manager of Allgro. "Fruits and vegetables are in a positive spiral, which is a good trend. Health is important at Allgro and we are convinced that vegetables aren't too expensive when you go with the seasons. We try to be creative by making new salads again and again and moving with the trends."
Family company Allgro is a wholesaler and cutter of fruit and vegetables. The firm was founded in 1990 by Marleen's parents. Now the company is lead by Marleen and her husband. Allgrow has grown to a company with 140 employees in 28 years. The turnover of the fresh cutter has grown from 750,000 Euro in 1990 to 30 million Euro in 2017. Allgro cuts around 25 tonnes of processed product per day and has 600 set supply customers. Their customers are primarily Belgian, but they also have customers in France and Luxembourg.
"At the moment the focus is on the Belgian market, as there is still growth to be made there. The Netherlands is also an interesting market, but there is a difference between Belgian and Dutch vegetable mixes. The Dutch use other vegetables and mixes of vegetable packets. You have to go with this as a company, or you will fail and at the moment our hands are full with the Belgian market," says Marleen.
"Our customers are primarily in the food service sector and a small amount are in retail," according to Marleen. "We supply a lot to catering companies and to large kitchens. The production process is fully automatic or semi automatic, but we also supply tailored work." Allgro's goal is to create quality for the customer in a sustainable way. The company does this by being innovative, offering just-in-time deliveries and working without additives.
Allgro has fresh production of cut vegetables, but also fruit, every day. "We believe it is very important to work without additives, but we do guarantee a shelf life of 6 days. Our dressings for salads are also made without additives. We are busy commercialising these dressings, this plan is for the future. We want to be ahead of the game with Allgro in a very quickly evolving sector and so far we have done well. We are positive about the future," concludes Marleen.
For more information:
Marleen De Tant
Allgro
Polbroek 124
9520 Sint-Lievens-Houtem
+32(0)93 608 348