Potato News from Belgium

The Belgapom price for potatoes for processing (Bintje) established weekly in Belgium last friday hit its highest level of this year. The price was over ten times the price last year. "The Belgapom quotation is the most frequently used price obs...

Last week McCain Foods and PinguinLutosa announced an agreement on the sale of the PinguinLutosa potato division. The Belgian Newspaper 'De Standaard' reveals how McCain Foods ended up the preferred buyer instead of Conagra Foods Lamb Weston.

Intake of foods high in acrylamide during pregnancy is associated with lower birth weight and smaller head circumference. This was revealed in an international study of the diet of 1,100 pregnant women and newborns from Denmark, England, Greece, Norway...

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published its annual update report on acrylamide levels in food in 25 European countries. Acrylamide is a chemical contaminant produced during food processing. The report covers the monitoring period 2007-2...

Contrary to what many in the Belgian media had suggested, it is McCain Foods picking up the potato division of the Belgian Frozen Food manufacturer PinguinLutosa and not Conagra Foods Lamb Weston.

The European Potato Processors Association (EUPPA) general assembly has approved yesterday new statutes and elected a new board at its meeting in Brussels earlier this week. The EUPPA member companies actively process potatoes in Austria, Belgium, Fra...

As from the 1st of November onwards Marleen Vaesen (1959) will be appointed as CEO of PinguinLutosa. She will take over the position of Hein Deprez, who was CEO of PinguinLutosa to date. Hein Deprez will subsequently, as president of the Strategic Com...

The European Food Safety Authority has concluded that a recent paper raising concerns about the potential toxicity of genetically modified (GM) maize NK603 and of a herbicide containing glyphosate is of insufficient scientific quality to be considered ...

In April 2002, authorities, food industry, caterers and consumers were confronted by the unexpected finding that a number of heated foods contained significant levels of acrylamide, a substance known until then only as a highly reactive industrial chem...

The North-western European Potato Growers (NEPG) estimate the potato yield in the participating countries (Belgium, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) will be 22.99 million tonnes. This is down 14.5% compared to last season.

La salud del corazón de millones de europeos aún se encuentra en riesgo debido al alto contenido de ácidos grasos trans de algunos alimentos rápidos y procesados. Aunque los niveles globales han disminuido, pocos países tienen una limitación legal en l...

Sustainable potato production across the EU could be under threat from potato cyst nematodes (PCN) and free living nematodes (FLN) without a comprehensive review of sampling and management options.

Although PinguinLutosa has not declared who the buyer is of their Lutosa potato processing division, the Belgian Media have made their mind up: Lamb Weston will buy Lutosa.

The Board of Directors of PinguinLutosa have reached a principle agreement on the proposed sale of the Lutosa division. A term sheet was signed in which the entreprise value has been fixed on 225 million euro and the transaction is subject to the fulf...

PinguinLutosa NV (PIN), the Belgian producer of frozen vegetables, rose the most in almost three years in Brussels trading after saying it received unsolicited non-binding offers for its potato division.

Despite increased awareness about the risks of too much sodium in consumers’ diets and pledges from governments around the world to reduce salt levels in food, products with low/no/reduced sodium claims have seen some decline over the past years accord...

Los españoles toman más alimentos saludables que el resto de los europeos, según un estudio realizado por Herbalife en colaboración con la experta del The Northern Ireland Centre for Food and Health (NICHE), la psicóloga Bárbara Stewart-Knox. Aunque el...

The potato market is very successful at the moment. "The demand is at a high level and the prices are good,"says Karel Casteels from Lathouwers &Co. "We didn't expect it at first, but it is a lot busier than last year."He believ...