The Belgian FAM makes cutting machines for all the major fruit, fish, vegetable, potato, cheese and meat-related companies in the world. Nine-two percent is exports. ‘Our machines are copied to the sea in China. Luckily, they don’t know what they’re copying yet.’
This machine can cut 6 tons of cheese per hour into cubes of 4x4x4 millimeters’, says CEO Mark Van Hemelrijk proudly as he leads us into the ‘closed’ research department of his cutting machine company FAM in Kontich. The machine looks ‘ordinary’, ‘but that only seems to be the case’, he says. ‘This is top technology. Several welded stainless steel parts are finished with a precision of 5 hundredths of a millimeter. Seamless, no bolts. Some surfaces are in polished stainless steel. Everything has to be extremely brush-friendly to prevent contamination with salmonella, listeria or other bacteria.’
The 1,400-kilogram machine, with a price tag of 145,000 euros, is intended for the major American cheese producers who supply tons of ground cheese daily to the six American pizza multinationals, who make millions of pizzas a day. The development of the machine took more than three years.
‘America is very much watching the hygiene of food’, says Van Hemelrijk. ‘When we presented the machine – the largest in our range – we got as many as 200 comments from the USDA, the Department of Agriculture. Little by little, we got rid of it. Eventually, the USDA approved the machine, and now it’s considered one of the world’s safest food products. That’s what made big customers.’
Skating
The Belgian FAM is the world leader in the assembly of food cutting machines. The knives for those machines come from the sister company Stumabo. Both are part of the Hifferman holding company of the Van Hemelrijk-Vandebroeck families.
FAM, fully Fabrication & Consultancy for Mechanical Engineering, started after the Second World War with harvest processing and filling machines for the first large canning factories such as Marie Thumas, but then started to focus on cutting machines for the food sector. After a few ownership changes it fell into the hands of Hifferman.0.02 mm MCDONALD’S FRIES ARE CUT WITH A PRECISION OF 2 HUNDREDTHS OF A MILLIMETER. FAM SUPPLIES THE MACHINES FOR THIS PURPOSE.
‘My wife’s grandfather – I’m from the kouwe side (laughs) – built scissor knives with Stumabo after the war to cut steel. He also made ice skates, and that was the first step towards the production of high-quality food knives. We sell 2.8 million a year. FAM has been one of our major customers for many years and in 1997 we brought the two together. It was the key to growth.’
‘Both companies have been working internationally for a long time. Born global, one would say now. We then drew up a common strategic plan, merged the know-how and the distributor and agent network and set up five foreign branches. Always with native speakers to understand the cultural uniqueness of a country.’
Profile FAM and Stumabo
FAM, Stumabo and their affiliates have 117 employees and 49 agents/distributors worldwide, employing 95 people on a daily basis.
Turnover: FAM (2019): 30 million euros. Stumabo: 15 million.
Operating profit: FAM: 2.4 million euros. Stumabo: 3.4 million.
Locations in France, uk, Spain, Poland and USA.
92% of FAM’s machines go abroad. To 97 countries on all continents. The rest is intended for belgian vegetable, cheese, meat and chip processors. That global presence recently earned the company the Lion of Export.
‘A beautiful crowning achievement’, says Van Hemelrijk. ‘I don’t dare say it sometimes, but here a handful of people develop machines that determine how hundreds of millions of people eat over the next few years. Everywhere in the world where you eat sliced fries, chances are it’s cut by our machines and knives. McCain, the world’s largest chip maker, is a customer. I estimate that half of the world’s chip production goes through our machines.’
‘Almost everything on your pizza or what you find in the supermarket – in glass, canned, fresh, frozen, vegetables, fruit, fish – has been cut through our machines. We’ll cut the piece of Herta ham on your breakfast plate, the fruit in your Materne jam, the lettuce and fries at your McDonald’s or other fast food burger, the fruit in your Danone yogurt and the fries for your Croky chips that will put you to sleep in front of the TV at night. That’s true worldwide. For french fries alone, we have knives with about 70 cutting shapes.’
‘Why do you have to do it all so precisely? People don’t think about it, but the fries for McDonald’s are cut with a precision of 2 hundredths of a millimeter. Fries producers want precision. They investigated the most optimal absorption of fat and the ideal baking process. The fries must be the same everywhere. Ditto for cheese. Cheese on pizzas should be cut correctly, because the melting time is calculated to a fraction of a second. Otherwise, he can burn.”
Chinese copies
FAM delivers worldwide. Also in Asia, which like the US accounts for 15 percent of sales. That has its consequences. ‘In China, our FAM machines are eagerly copied. See you. Fortunately, they don’t always know what they’re copying. More than once, they are not aware of what is important, why everything has to be or is so precise their knowledge of contamination inadequate.’
The Chinese copies are mainly taken by local producers. According to Van Hemelrijk, large international players with very strict environmental and quality standards have a preference for FAM machines or that of a major American competitor.
‘The question is how long. The only way to maintain that edge is with innovation. That’s why we’re betting a lot on knowledge. Knowledge today is fleeting. You have to question the market over and over again. Eating habits are constantly changing. That’s why we never look further ahead than a few years.’
In order to maintain this knowledge, Van Hemelrijk developed a ‘knowledge pyramid’ in his company. That sounds like a marketing talk, but he doesn’t think it’s at all. ‘The foundation is our technology specialists. R&D people, visionaries, gurus who come up with brand new things and file patents. We need them for revolutionary ideas.”
Then comes the engineering. It looks at how the FAM machines fit seamlessly into the customer’s production line. Then come the marketwatchers, who capture food trends. Van Hemelrijk: ‘Chips, for example, are becoming a bit oldskool. In the freezer department of the supermarket you will find ‘dippers’ from a large chip manufacturer, gutter-shaped baked potato tins with which you spoon sauces. They’re hip. The chip manufacturer asked us to make cutting machines for those dip chips. Our engineers have developed and assembled it for the whole world. We’ve been working on that for years.’Cheese and potatoes, we believe, will be the food products of the future. Meat substitutes like tofu are becoming more important.
For his ‘knowledge gathering’, FAM recruited a bioengineer and a doctor of biochemistry a few years ago. They travel the world to analyse all possible cutable food products to the bone. Their data is stored in a digital ‘knowledge book’ designed by the company, which is accessible to suppliers, customers and employees via various ‘layers’.
‘I’m very proud of that,’ says Van Hemelrijk. ‘Some examples. There are hundreds of potato varieties. Our people investigate the starch content, how much water they absorb in what season, and so on. They look at the difference between a strawberry from Hoogstraten, from China and from North Africa. For a strawberry supplier from Danone, for say, it is important to know that North African strawberries are better cut at -4 degrees Celsius and those of us at -8 degrees.’
‘We’re a global player in cutting squid rings. Then you need to know all about it. Cheese that’s an hour older cuts differently. Cheese and potatoes, we believe, will be the food products of the future. Asians are eating more and more potatoes instead of rice. The ecological footprint of rice is five times greater: you need 500 litres of water per kilogram of potatoes. For rice 2,500 liters. Meat substitutes such as tofu are also becoming more important. We put all that into our knowledge book and that’s how we give our customers the knowledge they need for their production process. That’s the basis for staying at the top.’
FAM does not intend to move its production abroad. ‘In the mid-1990s, we recruited a Chinese engineer to see if we could move production from the Stumabo plant to China. It soon became clear that we had to supply everything, up to the cooling oil, from Belgium. Then we decided to stay here. The manufacturing industry in Flanders is world-class. We get all our machine parts within a 30-kilometre radius.’
Takeover prey
Technology and successful international presence generate interest. Van Hemelrijk is occasionally asked if his companies are for sale. ‘We regularly get private equity people on the floor. But it’s not on the agenda. FAM and Stumabo farmers well and have a good balance. My family and I are not ready for a sale. Neither do the employees. It would destroy the soul of our company. Private equity wants to level.’
‘Covid has reduced the turnover of FAM and Stumabo by 15 and 8 percent respectively and our order book also took a dent. But I still sleep well. We’ll get through it. We’re not in the corner where the heavy blows fall. Nutrition remains important. We have enough reserves. But I wouldn’t sleep well if we were owned by a private equity group and had to repay heavy loans every month. The growth has come because we are a family business. In the last five years, our turnover has doubled to 30 million euros. Everything is reinvested in the company. I’m happy to do this.’
Is there anything that wakes him up? ‘I’m positive. You may be awake to Brexit and the dollar rate – our big competitor is American – but there’s no point. There’s not much you can do about it. The things we can do something about, we try to assess as well as possible, with the necessary measures. With a population rising to 9.8 billion by 2050, the need for food is growing automatically. So there are a lot of opportunities.’
“How long will I be CEO?” I don’t know. (laughs) I’m 62. I started at Stumabo in 1983 and later became CEO at FAM. My son and son-in-law already work in the company. We’ll see what the future holds. Above all, we want to remain a family business.’
Hifferman and L’Origine du Monde
In 1997, Mark Van Hemelrijk put his two companies FAM and Stumabo in the holding company Hifferman, a fictitious name that he still faces questions about. ‘When I was looking for a suitable name, I read in the newspaper that in the cellars of a museum they had deepened the painting ‘L’Origine du Monde’ by the French painter Gustave Courbet. That canvas caused controversy because it’s a close-up of a woman’s pubic area. I read that Courbet’s Irish mistress, Joanna Hifferman, had been a model. I thought that was a last name that gives me confidence. Later – Wikipedia did not exist at the time – it turned out that the journalists had made a mistake and that the woman’s name was Hiffernan.’ (laughs)
Under the Hifferman dome are another real estate company (Origo) and a wellness company (Relex). ‘Why wellness? Twelve years ago, I turned 50, and sometimes men go crazy. They buy a motorcycle or find another partner. That wasn’t an option for me. (chuckles) I wanted something other than steel and machinery. My wife and I used to go to a wellness and I thought, “Here I can still do something.”
‘I travelled to Japan and Sweden to see how it was done. I thought I’d do it a day a week as a hobby. But i soon realized that a wellness center is a company like another. It also has employees, accounting and problems. Only the object is different. Just like that bike or that sweet, it’s something that sometimes wonders why you did it afterwards. But the centre is running pretty well.’
