Leuven, Belgium – This is the story of a family farm in the North of France, handed down from father to sons some twenty years ago. Over two decades, the sons have earned a fine reputation in the washed potato business.
Following the early years of steady growth, the first wave of investment was decided in 2007 to provide for increased activity. A sorting line featuring a first-generation automatic sorter was installed in a new building to develop the target markets: supermarkets and export, and packaging services for third parties.
To begin with, the two Vandaele brothers only processed the production of their family fields. Subsequently, they considered increasing the volumes by sourcing produce from other producers and importing packaged potatoes, or by packaging potatoes for third parties.
Their objective was to increase the volume by 30%. However, achieving this growth would require increasing the workforce dedicated to manual sorting, which proved to be a challenge, and installing a second processing line to double the number of manual sorting lines.
This was required because Flandre Pomme de Terre
