Although a lot of Dutch onion traders prefer selling an onion with skin as strong as possible, Snebo actually prefers cutting it off. The Dutch company from Ossendrecht has been active in the onion processing industry for 40 years and supplies a broad range of processed onion products, varying from cut and peeled onions to cubes, flakes, rings and slices.
Toon Snepvangers
Although the company is still expanding considerably in Ossendrecht – four new Finis peeling machines were recently installed – the biggest expansion takes place about a thousand kilometres to the east, in the Polish town of Orchowo. Although Snebo processes about 9,000 tonnes of yellow onions in Ossendrecht, the company now processes at least twice that amount in Poland. Buyers include vegetable cutting plants, the fresh market, the fish industry, but also baker’s shops, among others.
“Nine years ago, we also tried to make a go of it in Poland, but we were unsuccessful at the time. I had a graduate who kept the entire factory running. When he finished college, he reported back to me. I immediately had a good feeling about him. We then drove all around Poland, looking for a suitable location, and we bought a former concrete factory,” says Toon Snepvangers.
The Polish location has now been operational for six years, and the 7,000 square metre-factory employs as many as 130 people. Three onion peeling lines were recently installed. “We work with labour-intensive products. Labour was our most important reason to establish ourselves in Poland, although I should say the majority of our workers now comes from Ukraine,” Toon says. Although a lot of labour still took place manually in Poland until recently, the first automatic lines have now also been installed. Toon personally tries to travel to Poland every month. “I don’t always manage it, but we fortunately have a lot of good people there.”
Polish location in Orchowo
“Our core business continues to be peeling and cutting onions, but we also started to become specialised in making cubes and rings in Poland. The majority of our customers comes from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, the UK and Germany. But we’re also trying to develop the Polish market more. For a long time, Germany was behind with processed product, but we’re now seeing demand from Germany increasing, and our advantage is that we drive through that country anyway, with our final product from Poland.”
Snebo primarily uses Polish onions in the Polish factory, both from their own production and from member contract growers. “We want to expand this volume in the coming years, depending on customer demand, because we won’t start growing on the off chance,” Toon explains. “It’s not that we work specifically with onion varieties for processing. One variety is easier to peel than others, but in the end, every onion can be peeled. We start the season with plant onions, and we then switch to seed onions. Part of our production is Planet Proof certified, which allows us to respond to demand from Dutch and Belgian vegetable cutting plants.”
The volume of yellow onions processed by Snebo shows a slight increase, but the market of processed red onions is on the rise in particular. “Red onions are used in practically all salads. This is a fast-growing market for us. We also process shallots, which we vacuum-pack. Regarding packaging, we supply as the customers desire. This varies from big-bags to 250-gramme flow-packs. We also process organic onions both in the Netherlands and in Poland, we’re seeing this demand in processing increasing slightly.”
The expensive onions are quite a challenge for the onion processor this year. “We all got quite the wake-up call,” Toon laughs. “That’s why we’re now getting onions from continents we never got onions from before. For example, we processed a lot of Chinese onions this year, and I have to say quality didn’t disappoint. Because we had such a dry summer, we have a lot of small onions, and that’s not ideal for peeling. Fortunately we now also have a peeler installed that was made specifically for these small sizes. We can also ‘quarter’ onions as of recently.”
The aim for the coming years is to show the rest of the world what the onion processing company is capable of as well. “We already put the first version of our new website online, we made a company video using drone images, for instance, and we also want to start attending quite a few fairs in the coming years. We have a story to tell, after all. The great thing about our company is that we control the entire supply chain. From sowing, planting, harvesting to transport, sorting and processing. In the future, we also want to set up a frozen line in Poland. Our onion line would then come completely full circle,” Toon concludes.
Voor meer informatie:
Toon en Monique Snepvangers
Snebo
Armendijk 3
4641 PB Ossendrecht
Tel: 0164-612660
Fax: 0164-616098
www.snebo.nl
toon@snebo.nl