Industry Agriculture Headquarters Veendam, Netherlands Number of employees 1,314 | Founded 1919 Type Cooperative | |
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Key people Bert Jansen (CEO), Ed Kraaijenzank (CFO) Products Starch, starch derivatives, protein Revenue € 521.1 miljoen (2014-2015) Profiles | ||
Avebe starch superheroes
The cooperative Avebe U.A. (abbreviation of Aardappelmeel Verkoop Bureau) is an international Dutch starch manufacturer located in the north of the Netherlands and produces starch products based on potato starch and potato protein for use in food, animal feed, paper, construction, textiles and adhesives.
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About 2500 farmers are member of Avebe. The cooperation is divided into six districts (two in Germany and four in the Netherlands). Avebe starch factories in the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden processes about 3 million tons in potatoes.
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History
The history of Avebe is strongly connected with the history of the province Groningen, the many privately owned starch manufacturers in the area and the former starch company KSH (Royal Scholten-Honig) founded by Willem Albert Scholten in 1841, the first Dutch multinational.
The name Avebe is derived from the Dutch words Aardappelmeel Verkoop Bureau (Potato Flour Sales Office) (AVB). The cooperative was founded in 1919 as a cooperative partnership between different potato starch manufacturers located in the province Groningen owned by potato farmers to ensure good market prices for their native starch. The farmer cooperatives successfully pushed the privately owned starch companies away from native starch into the production of starch derivatives. In 1948 the cooperation became one company and the name was changed to Avebe. In 1956, the first derivatives were produced. In 1978, after bankruptcy of Scholten, forward integration of the potato starch industry in the Groningen was finalized as Avebe took over a large part of the Scholten company. KSH was the last privately owned potato starch company left over in the Netherlands.
Avebe is now worldwide the largest producer of potato starch and potato starch derivatives.
Recent developments
After further expanding in the 1980s and 90s the potato starch business in Germany and also expanding to other starch sources as wheat and tapioca, Avebe farmers cooperative has reorganized its activities since 2006 again around the potato crop. Avebe produces since 2005 a GMO-free amylopectin waxy potato starch (Eliane) and is investing in a new refining technique to produce native potato protein (Solanic) for food applications.