Building a resilient business for the future

At Van Ballegooijen Foods, we are building for the future: our production site in Wijk en Aalburg is being expanded. We are reserving space to increase our cooling and freezing capacity, and also creating more room for production to allow further automation. Our logistics operations are also being upgraded.

There are several reasons for this expansion: much of the work is still done manually, and currently, we outsource the storage of frozen products. By expanding our freezing capacity, we gain more control over quality and availability, and significantly reduce transportation movements. This is not only beneficial for costs but also for our CO₂ footprint.

Manual labor
At the moment, producing laminated dough still involves a lot of manual labor. That’s why we are fully automating the production line: this means products will go directly from the line into the spiral freezer. From there, they are packaged, palletized by a robot, and then ready for further storage. We are now working on automating the final stage, aiming for a fully automated cold storage system, so the right pallet can be retrieved on demand.

Viability
This step towards automation will save us about four full-time equivalents (FTEs) on the lamination line. We are also working on increasing efficiency on our Cookie Dough line, which will result in an additional saving of one to two positions. Having fewer people on the line is essential for the continuity of our business: it is becoming increasingly difficult to find staff for these roles, especially for jobs in cold or frozen storage environments. As a company, we are therefore less focused on standard payback periods and place more importance on long-term viability.

Attractive
However, this shift toward automation does come with a downside. We will become more dependent on external parties and must ensure our own staff grows along with the new technology. Fortunately, we’ve been able to fill our technical vacancies so far. This may be due to what we can offer potential employees. We have everything in-house: cooling, heating, automation, software, and more. We work with the latest technologies and, in some areas, are even ahead of our time. This makes our company attractive to technicians.

Energy
We haven’t taken this expansion lightly. A lengthy preparation process preceded it, and it didn’t always go smoothly, for various reasons. Our company is located on the edge of the village, not in an industrial zone. There was enough space on our site, but with such expansions, you have to involve all stakeholders. Another challenge was our limited energy connection capacity — the issue of grid congestion was just beginning to emerge at the time. Therefore, we conducted a very detailed analysis of our current energy usage: what are the peaks and valleys, and where is there still room? We also installed solar panels, gas generators, and a battery. At night, we still have some capacity left, which means we cool more at night, freeing up more energy for production during the day.

Fine-tuning
Construction work will be completed by the end of this year. In 2026, we hope to be operating at full capacity. After that, it will just be a matter of fine-tuning.

This article was publiced in EVMI magazine 4, 2025