Making better bacon and ham products
Van der Mey is a specialist producer of cooked ham and cured bacon products based in Sassenheim in the Netherlands. The company started in 1956 by an artisan butcher and expanded production in the 1970s. It is a large company that acts as a small one.
Customer profile: Van der Mey
Van der Mey makes delicious products in a traditional way. It supplies fresh, frozen, cooked and ready-to-cook meat products to to supermarkets, wholesale customers, the food service industry and food processing companies. The company currently has over 150 recipes to manage and each one must adhere to its strict quality control standards.
It's a difficult job that requires all the elements of production to come together. Jan Oostveen, the project manager, summed it up: “Making stable, repeatable, high-quality products is an interplay between the people, the quality of raw materials, the recipe itself, the construction of your process, and the machinery you use.”
Making stable, repeatable, high-quality products is an interplay between the people, the quality of raw materials, the recipe itself, the construction of your process, and the machinery you use.”– Jan Oostveen, Project Manager at Van der Mey
– Jan Oostveen, Project Manager at Van der Mey
The challenge
Staying ahead of the competition requires continual innovation. For Van der Mey this means developing new products to satisfy changing customer demands. In recent years there has been a growing market for products with fewer ‘E’ numbers and reduced salt and sodium.
But these products are included in recipes for a reason. Take them out and changes to the process become necessary to maintain the quality of the final product.
“I think GEA chooses the same approach to the market as we do. They listen to input from their customers, translate that into concepts, and then build machines that fill the need.”– Jan Oostveen, Project Manager at Van der Mey
– Jan Oostveen, Project Manager at Van der Mey
The GEA solution
This is where GEA has been able to help Van der Mey by working through these challenges to achieve the objectives, without compromising quality.
“I think GEA chooses the same approach to the market as we do,” said Jan. “They listen to input from their customers, translate that into concepts, and then build machines that fill the need.”
Jan values the relationship with Willem Poos, Product Group Owner, Marination at GEA, with whom he has worked for many years. “GEA is always accessible and, like us, has short lines of communication We always know who to go to when we have questions. It’s not just Willem, our technical people work together to keep the plant running as it should.”
One example of this cooperation was the introduction of 2mm brine injector needles in 2012. Van der Mey tested the machine in its factory before buying. The results, according to Jan, were “Spot on”. It was the same story with the GEA ScreenFilter. All the field testing for the machine was done in cooperation with Van der Mey, with a similar result.
Since the early days, Van der Mey has chosen the heritage brands of GEA (such as Belam, Wolfking, Scanio, CFS). The factory at Sassenheim now has many GEA machines. These include brine injectors (including the latest innovative MultiJector), tumblers, grinders, mixers, cutters and, more recently, multifunctional slicers and packaging machines.
But the development process goes on and, as the machines have become more complex, Van der Mey has started to ask more of its own technical and maintenance people. GEA is, again, helping. “We are implementing a preventive maintenance plan,” said Jan. “Continuity of production is very important for us, so we have the machines inspected periodically by GEA's engineers, to avoid downtime.”
