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My name is Francis Titeca.
I am the owner of Gold Meat
Gold Meat is the Benelux market leader
in the manufacture of jellies and
aspic products.
And we are highly innovative
in our pickling process.
Innovation for Gold Meat
means that we are budgeting
about 6% of our turnover
for innovating in production
or new products
or respond to new technology
found by me and which we try
to apply to one of our markets or products
Innovation ... Yes that is obvious.
It is essential that you set from the
beginning a number of evaluation
points and if you come to the conclusion
Two, three, four times in a row
it really does not work. That
results are just not there or
that sometimes the budget derails.
Then you must have the courage to stop.
Seven or eight years back
I intended that my company
should be able to put "clean label" products
on the market. This means: the products
still have two to three weeks shelf life.
Without additives and without preservatives.
We are "brining" in the first place to get a product
with a certain taste. In the second place to get a
product with a longer shelf life. And in the third
place that the product has a beautiful color.
With the old system we pickled with needles,
followed by a stay in a brine bath.
Now we are brining under high pressure,
so we do not need the brine bath anymore.
And we save 20.000 liters of brine per day.
This has a great positive impact for the
environment.
If I have a particular idea or a wish
my first contact alway is the
Innovation Centre Limburg. It starts with a
conversation and they mention, what or who
has the most appropriate knowledge
investigate it further.
Then a meeting is convened.
Once we have an idea of whom to start
with and who is going to develop it.
Then follows a conversation with IWT.
We realize that only a very limited
part of our sales is in Belgium.
So we need to score on the export markets.
There we must really make a difference
and get our way whith "added value"
through innovation. We can not use the
cheap labor. We should really do it with
our expertise and the "added value", including
innovation that you can bring to a
number of products on the market
that the local producers, for example in
Germany and France, not have. And we must see
to keep our innovative advantage of a few years
to continue in the future.