Garlic Solutions mechanically breaks bulbs into loose cloves

Originally, Kaz Abbekerk is from the world of meal boxes. In that world, he experienced the phenomenon that people ordered bulbs of garlic, and consumed these by the clove. As a solution, he developed a machine line that automatically breaks the bulbs into cloves, unpeeled. As of this month, Garlic Solutions is located in De Lier, the Netherlands. Marley Spoon, Leen Menken, Koornstra and Vroegop-Windig are among the company’s customers. “We started very small-scale, and now we supply 300,000 to 400,000 cloves per week.”

“As far as I know, we are the only company that processes loose garlic cloves in their peel semi-automatically. We currently mostly supply to meal boxes, but we are also expecting demand from supermarkets and wholesalers will increase. I expect supermarkets will eventually go from selling bulbs to selling cloves. The largest part of the bulb is now often thrown out. After all, customers do not want 36 but only four cloves in their spaghetti,” Kaz says. His team consists of two permanent employers and a number of temps.

“Garlic cloves are still relatively unknown, so it is a challenge for us to market them. Companies can buy from us in two ways. We can both break the garlic for companies as a service provider, and companies can also buy the cloves from us. We offer both French, Spanish and Chinese cloves of garlic in their peel. Each garlic has different characteristics as regards size, flavour and shelf life,” Kaz concludes.