Also marking the retirement of Jilis van Kuilenburg
Netherlands: Nedato celebrates 50 years
"Ladies and gentleman... A very warm welcome to you all!
"First of all I am very pleased you all took the effort to come to our reception to celebrate 50 years of Nedato after a long day walking and talking here at Fruitlogistica Berlin. We organized this special occasion for our international clients and exporters because we knew a lot of you where here; we thought it is not very sustainable and efficient to invited you for a party in the Netherlands taking a lot of time in traveling! We’ll have our Dutch party with farmers, Dutch customers and our personnel later on this year.
"Nedato is 50 years young and I am proud to be part of it, I am also proud of our staff, partly present here and after 50 year and 2 generations I am pleased that we found the next and 3rt generation being enthusiastic about our potato product and the company Nedato!
"But how did it all start? In brief: the predecessors of Nedato were two cooperative storage places. In those days the farmers did not store all the potatoes by themselves, but they had room in a bigger storage place in the village. They hired someone to be responsible for keeping the potatoes and it made sense to sell and pack these potatoes directly from the storage place to the market. In 50 years things change, farmers keep there own potatoes and Nedato is now a company who do the sales of 400.000 tones of potatoes to the international fresh market and to the international processing industry. Nedato is now one of the main packers and traders in the Netherlands.
"Of great importance are of course you, our customers; over the years Nedato developed a system in translating the market in how and what we grow with our farmers to satisfy your needs as a customer. We are proud of our dedicated farmers! In all these relations, customers and farmers, confidence is a main issue; confidence is key. Some proof of this confidence is that we have here at present some customers with a business relation of over 25 years. Nedato has even business relations which last for 50 years!
"But we also have employees which are there for a long time; as announced in your invitation our colleague in sales, Jilis van Kuilenburg, will stop his potato career after 42,5 years; a real milestone. This reception is also on behalf of him. Please take your chance to see him here in Berlin for the last time working in potatoes and we wish him all the best!
"Within all the growing, selling and packing we do we will fore fill our mission statement concentrating on quality, taste, sustainability and service. We will do this in the future too and we hope you will be part of it.
"In the coming years Nedato will focus on a growing volume of high quality, good tasting potatoes and do that in a sustainable way. With fresh potatoes we will focus on the European area for retail, foodservice and restaurants; looking for further partnerships like we already have several. Our staff is enthusiastic about this and will make it work by talking to the customer and the consumer and see what the trend is and adapt our potatoes and potato products to the market.
"We will certainly work on sustainability because we are convinced that if we, as a world, go on using so much raw materials for a part of the inhabitants, this will not last. That’s why we have programs with our farmers on less input and more output; also the choice of varieties is very important than. In our pack house we work on less use of water and energy. This year we will make an extra contribution to our sustainability program by investing in solar panels to make our own electricity and contribute to our environment
"So Nedato is and will be your Potato Partner as an organization with full control over the process from plant to customer.
"I’d like to do bring out an a toast with you all to the your good health and another 50 years of Nedato; and off course to Jilis regretfully leaving Nedato."
For more information:
Heero Gramsma
Nedato BV
www.nedato.nl
