Potato News from Belgium

Stories about large losses in harvest in the Belgian sector due to the heavy rainfall are circulating in various media. But Romain Cools of Belgapom says it is too early to come up with a percentage.

In early June, AVR bvba - manufacturer of agricultural machinery for a.o. the potato sector - officially opened its new production facility in the presence of Governor Carl Decaluwé, Mayor Kris Declercq and Roeselare Aldermen Marc Van Walleghem, Nathalie Muylle and Griet Coppé.

Belgium loves to be in the news for their great french fries - but this is probably not what they had in mind.

The first common event of Freshfel Europe & Europatat took place this week: “Doing something good to yourself and to others will be the driver for the purchasing decision of fresh-produce customers”, concluded the associations.

Europatat appoints a new board, including Jos Muyshondt as President, Domenico Citterio as vice-president and Gilles Fontaine as treasurer.

Dutch Potato Processing Equipment manufacturer Kiremko installs an innovative production line in Belgium with a capacity of 16-20 ton/hr of French fries

Almost a third of all food produced worldwide is never eaten, leading to 1.3 billion tons of food waste each year. This includes around 45 per cent of all fruit and vegetables and 20 per cent of meat.

Europatat and Freshfel Europe will jointly celebrate their first common annual meeting on 2 June 2016 in Brussels.

The remarkable growth of the Belgian potato-processing sector in the past few decades has continued in 2015.

In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) met to agree to reduce per capita food waste by half by 2030. TOMRA Sorting Food explains how their activities impact food waste

The Europatat Congress 2016 will take place in Brussels (Belgium) on 1 & 2 June 2016, under the slogan “Not business as usual!”

TOMRA Sorting Food, el fabricante líder de sistemas de clasificación óptica para alimentos, ha llegado a un punto importante en su historia.

From 2016 onwards, the BEST Sorting and ODENBERG legacy brands will be retired and the company will progress as a single, unified brand under TOMRA Sorting Food.

In December Potato Processor Agristo completed a new phase in the construction of the new deepfreeze warehouse in Nazareth, the installation of the automated stacker cranes. Completion of the cold-store is planned for late March 2016

Continued advances in automation and robotics are making the global food manufacturing and processing industries safer, more efficient and able to deliver higher profits, according to TOMRA Sorting Food.

TOMRA Sorting Food has further improved its customer care offer with the appointment of Andreas Reddemann as new global service director.

EU and US negotiators were meeting this week in Miami, USA for the 11th round of Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations. Negotiations on tariffs and quotas could have serious implications – either positive or negative - for the agricultural and primary food transformation sector as markets would open up.

Celcaa, FoodDrinkEurope, SACAR and Copa and Cogeca held a high-level Seminar in Brussels today to
discuss the new EU promotion policy for agri-food products which is entering into force on 1 December