Last Saturday, Snebo, an onion peeling business from Ossendrecht, the Netherlands, threw a party. Forty years ago, Henk Snepvangers came home with a bag of dirty onions. His wife peeled and sold these. This, in a nutshell, is how Snebo got started in 1979.
The company's current director, Toon Snepvangers, told this anecdote in his opening speech. During this speech, he outlined the company's development. Besides Mrs. Snepvangers, more people in the town of Bergen op Zoom became involved in peeling onions for Snebo. This job provided a good extra income for them.
Back then, the onions were collected as quickly as possible at the end of the day. Refrigerated transport was not yet available. To guarantee freshness, everything, therefore, had to be processed as quickly as possible. Later, 100 people were peeling onions for Snebo in their warehouse.
The Snepvangers family
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In 1988, Snebo purchased an onion peeling line. The technology was not nearly fully developed. Production fell from 100 tons of peeled product per week to 20 tons. From then on, the fresh market was also supplied with peeled onions.
Due to a lack of space, a farm was bought in Rilland in 1998. This was done on the assumption that the local municipality would give them permission to peel onions on that site. At first, this did not seem to pose any problems.
However, once they applied for permits, Snebo received a negative response. Woensdrecht remained their production location. They started a contracting firm in Rilland. Snebo also started sorting onions.
Poland
In 2006, the company moved to Ossendrecht. Its activities were centralized here. Snebo was still growing rapidly in Ossendrecht. Four new Finis peeling machines were recently installed here. Despite this, its most significant growth is taking place about 1,000km away, to the east, in Orchowo, Poland.
Annually, Snebo processes about 9,000 tons of yellow onions in Ossendrecht. In Poland, the company processes double that. Buyers include vegetable processors, the fresh market, the fish industry, as well as bakeries.
Toon and Monique went to Poland in 1993. An employee lived there and invited them to visit. Thanks to this visit, the Snepvangers fell in love with this country. From then on, they take a trip to Poland a few times a year.
From there, the idea grew to start 'something' in Poland. In 2009, they opened a peeling company in a rented space in the Polish town of Ponic. Then, in 2013, they bought a building in Orchowo.
Their colleague, Grant Saakian, was involved in this Polish adventure from the start. Thanks, in part, to him, the company is what it is today. Toon thanked all the staff for their contribution - 'without them there is no Snebo”.
Toon and Monique Snepvangers in front of one of Snebo's trucks
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There will be further expansion in Ossendrecht in the coming years. The company wants to grow. There are already many plans on the wish list for the years to come. However, before that happens, Monique and Toon will soon cycle from the Dutch town of Maastricht to Rome, Italy.
They hope to be home again in about four weeks. That is, if they do not encounter too much headwind. They then hope to have fresh ideas with which to continue building Snebo over the next 40 years.