History
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- Guy and Luc Van den Broeke
The Van den Broeke family has specialised in potatoes for four generations.
The grandparents of Guy and Luc
Van den Broeke were potato merchants
back in the 1920s.
As from 1950, operating from their head office
at Olsene, 20 km outside Ghent (Belgium) the family specialised in exporting potatoes.
Ten years later, the family expanded the business to include growing potatoes.
In 1977, the firm took a new direction when it bought a potato-processing factory at Leuze-en-Hainaut (Belgium), equipped with three drying cylinders for producing flakes and a small production line for frozen French fries.
In 1978, the official manufacturing business commenced, when the public company
Van den Broeke - Lutosa was set up on 22 March.
In 1981, the company expanded its product range by setting up a production line for frozen potato specialities at its Leuze factory. In the same year, the company launched the Lutosa brand on the Belgian and European markets.
In 1988, Guy and Luc Van den Broeke, who currently head the Van den Broeke-Lutosa group,
took over the public company Primeur, which had previously produced frozen vegetables. They converted the site into a plant manufacturing pre-fried frozen French fries and potato flakes.
In 1998, in response to growing market demand, they extended the product range to include chilled chips. The public company Vanelo was established on the same site as Primeur at St. Eloois-Vijve (Belgium).
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In 2000, the company adopted an ambitious new expansion plan designed to increase its sales by 50% between 2001 and 2005 and widen its product range substantially.
In 2001, the sum of 37 million euros was invested to build a new production line at Leuze. This allowed Lutosa to expand its range to include products coated with starch or spices (e.g. Spicy or Garden Wedges) and to enter a previously untouched market sector: fast food. The new production line, one of the most modern and efficient in Europe, has a capacity of 16 tonnes of finished products per hour; it is fully automated and equipped with state of the art technology, with special emphasis on hygiene standards.
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- Steam peeling of potatoes - Drying the fries
In 2002, in partnership with Electrabel, Lutosa set up the largest biogas cogeneration plant in Belgium, at Leuze-en-Hainaut. The plant demonstrates Lutosa's renewed commitment to sustainable development, using the biomass from its anaerobic purification station to produce green electricity, heat and steam. Two years later, a second plant was set up at the St-Eloois-Vijve site.
In 2003, Lutosa celebrated its 25th anniversary and continued to extend its global reach, setting up subsidiaries on new continents (such as Asia and South America). More info... (pdf file)
In 2004, at Leuze-en-Hainaut, Lutosa inaugurated one of the largest automated cold rooms (-21°C) in the world. It can hold 46,000 pallets, bringing total storage capacity for frozen goods to 83,000 pallets. More info... (pdf file).
In 2007, on September 28th, Guy & Luc Van den Broeke signed the agreement with the Deprez family (Univeg) and the Dejonghe family (Pinguin) regarding the sale of all the Lutosa shares to the Belgian company Pinguin as well as becoming part of the capital of the Pinguin group. Pinguin, who's head office is located in Westrozebeke, near Roeselare in West Flanders (Belgium), is specialised in the production and sale of frozen vegetables and frozen vegetables based products.
