Springfresh is a Polish company with a Dutch owner: Derreck Bac. The son of a grower decided to start the vegetable processing company about 13 years ago. They process vegetables for the fresh consumption. As of 2016, they’ve been working with the machines of Sormac, and Derreck is satisfied with these.
“Springfresh processes vegetables such as onions, sprouts, shallots, garlic, radish, cauliflower and broccoli. Our biggest product is onions, both red and yellow. Half our onions are red, even though a lot of processors choose yellow,” Derreck starts. “We process products for the fresh consumption. Our products come from the Netherlands, Poland, Germany, and sometimes from outside of Europe. Our most important sales markets are the Netherlands, Poland and Germany as well. Besides, we export a part to Scandinavia.” Springfresh is organically certified as well, but this only applies to a small part of the range.
The company is located in Suleçin in Poland, about 100 kilometres from Berlin. “My father has a farm with his cousin. His son went to Poland to start a farm 20 years ago, because Poland has more opportunities than the Netherlands. After I graduated college he asked if I wanted to join him in Poland. I then decided to start the factory.” Derreck now commutes between the Netherlands and Poland every week. “My family lives in the Netherlands, and I fly to Poland every week. They join my during the holidays.”
According to Derreck, the current onion season is one for the records. “It’s a historically difficult season right now. It hasn’t been this difficult since 1976. We managed to fill everything thus far, but I expect we’ll only be working with import as of 1 April.” The season is normal for the other products.
Derreck has been working with the Sormac machines since 2016. “I bought the first one in 2016, and we now have four. We bought our latest a month ago. I compared multiple suppliers, and the Sormac machine came out best price-wise per kilogram of end product. There was a bit of a trial period, but we’re now very satisfied. You need experience with the machines to get the most out of them.” The decision to work with Sormac wasn’t made lightly. “With these machines, we can process a lot more sizes than with other machines, and Sormac’s onion peelers are more than suitable to process red onions. The red onions tend to be slightly softer, so they’re more difficult to peel. We buy a lot directly from growers, so that we get many different sizes of the products. With these machines we can still peel all of them. For example, we also process the onions into rings, which can easily be done with these machines. Besides, the machines are compact. We need all the space we can get, so that suits us just fine. In certain weeks, the machines are operational for 24 hours straight, and that’s all going well.”
Sormac has two types of onion peelers: the USM-S60 (maximum capacity: 60 onions per minute) and the USM-S100 (maximum capacity: 100 onions per minute). “The Sormac onion peeling line type USM-S100 is known for its low sound level, no more than 83dB(A), its ease of operation and, naturally, its perfect peeling quality. The onion peelers are very environmentally and energy friendly, resulting in cost savings for the customer. This is mostly due to the low compressed air usage (1.2 Nm3). Besides, it’s important to know the machines can quickly and easily be maintained and cleaned. We continue to renew and innovate to maintain this high level. By constantly updating our onion peelers and making them more modern and sustainable, product safety, quality and care for the environment can be guaranteed,” says Roy Lemmen, commercial manager of Sormac.