Why Lekkerkerker Food?
Our director Mariska Lekkerkerker explains why it was time for a change.
Our director Mariska Lekkerkerker explains why it was time for a change.
Within our group, there has been a continually growing realisation that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. For many years, we have been producing cream cheese and processed cheese products with great success via our companies Lebo Kaas and Kasi Food. However, our client base has expanded in recent years to include new major clients who have placed utmost faith in us. We frequently communicate with our clients who repeatedly mention that our combination of activities is what makes us truly unique. As a result, it is time for us to clearly and explicitly highlight this unique combination by merging our manufacturing companies into the new firm Lekkerkerker Food as of 1 June.
Our family business has been around since 1977, when our parents Kees and Janny started to make and sell cheese. In the 40 years since these humble beginnings, their hard work and business acumen established the immense range of dairy products that we produce today. Once demand began to grow, we started to build our own production equipment, although we did it the Lekkerkerker way. We gave existing machines a new lease of life and adjusted them to meet our high standards, leading us to establish our sister company Lekkerkerker Dairy & Food Equipment 25 years ago, which now exports equipment to 40 countries.
Looking back, it is exactly this combination of food knowledge, technical knowledge and process knowledge that gives us such a strong advantage. We are increasingly working together with clients to provide optimal tailor-made solutions, which we can only do by drawing upon the combined strength of everyone in the Lekkerkerker Group. Lekkerkerker Food will allow us to more effectively demonstrate and highlight this winning combination.
Lekkerkerker Food explicitly expresses that we are a family business in the food industry. This enables clearer communication of what drives us every day: manufacturing delicious and appealing products and working together with our clients on cutting-edge innovation. Our expertise in dairy production means we understand our clients' needs, allowing us to work together effectively to create the perfect dairy or plant-based solutions.
The consolidation will also enable more effective customer service as our clients now have a single point of contact. The separate manufacturing companies will continue to exist, although client contact will be conducted via Lekkerkerker Food. As a result, we can boost the service we provide and optimise the simplicity and effectiveness of how we serve our clients.
Lebo is an exception: the brand is a famous name within the food service sector and stands for the quality and integrity of our cream cheese products. We will therefore continue to use this name for our products in this sales channel.
In 2018, we decided to start developing plant-based products alongside our dairy activities. We did this for one simple reason: the future is plant-based! Since then, we have already taken plenty of significant steps: our vegan cream cheese is virtually indistinguishable from the dairy variety and we've also developed some fantastic solid cheese products. We know exactly where we want to go, and over the next few years, we will take many more substantial steps in the transition to plant-based products. Vegan products rightly take pride of place within our companies and within Lekkerkerker Food, we can optimally showcase them.
In the next few years, we look forward to serving our clients even more effectively under our new name.
We are Lekkerkerker Food, the perfect partner for inventive cheese solutions!
