One has been developing and manufacturing precision cutting machinery for the food industry for over half a century, being one of the world leaders in this highly competitive market.
The other has more than 60 years of experience in the design and production of blades for the food processing industry, selling around 1.2 million such products every year to customers all over the world. Their names are FAM and Stumabo, they are sister companies, part of the Hifferman Group, and they share the same vision: to provide customers worldwide with cutting-edge solutions for food processing. Alin Ciolac reports.
It all started in 1997 when Mark Van Hemelrijk, current CEO and, back then, owner of Stumabo, formulated his company’s interest in acquiring FAM, at that point in time Stumabo’s main customer. The idea was that, by putting the two companies together, the customers could have access to their combined expertise, but would also rely on a much stronger entity that would be able to respond much better to the customers’ needs.
The same year, FAM and Stumabo joined forces and the merger went off to a flying start, as three years later the FAM plant had already become too small, leading to a relocation in 2001, this time to the current premises in Kontich, 40 kilometers away from Brussels. Even more recently, in 2014 both FAM and Stumabo doubled their floor space, providing more room for production equipment at Stumabo and a customer center, showroom and two laboratories at FAM.
Lifting each other up
Stumabo is growing on its own, thanks to the production of its hydrogen cutting heads for French fries, but it is also growing together with FAM as, if one develops, the other one follows on the same path. “Stumabo stays a blade manufacturer”, says Guy Baeten, the company’s Strategic Business Development Manager. “They try to make the best blades, with all the existing expertise, and the customers want to use the best blades in their cutting machines. FAM benefits from a very strong co-operation, which is underlined by the fact that our Research & Development teams have joined forces to become one.” There are four people working now in this team, who are also involved in the engineering process.
Previously, even after the merger, it used to be FAM and Stumabo, but the organization has undergone a long restructuring process. The result is that now the two sister companies and their employees come together on a regular basis. There are no different offices anymore. They can be FAM’s, just as well as they could be Stumabo’s. Meetings could and do take place in either of the two facilities, which are now separated by a 20-minute drive.
It is a unified team, which turns out to be very important, as it means the companies have a good output of patented products. Baeten goes on to say that “customers are coming to Stumabo and some are not even aware of the connection with FAM, they simply come to do business with a specialized blade manufacturer, wanting to have the best blades in the industry. And to them it matters more that Stumabo’s blades have a longer stand time than the ones from other companies on the market, than about the company’s close relationship with FAM.”
The reasons for that, as a matter of fact, are very easy to explain and they are based on matters of quality or service. When it comes to quality, Wilfried Rombauts, Stumabo’s Commercial Manager, is very efficient in pointing out essential aspects during our factory visit. Everything there follows strict and very well-structured quality control procedures and the monitoring is performed at micrometer range. Stumabo only works with martensitic stainless steel for the manufacturing of blades and knives. The steel sheets get punched or cut into a final shape, the hardening process is performed in-house and with expert third parties and the level of investment that has been made in order to benefit from state-of-the-art equipment is clearly visible.
As regards the level of service, suffice it to say that Stumabo always keeps a considerable amount of their range in stock, which includes around 10,000 blades covering a wide variety of applications. It is important that products can be and are supplied all year round in the way that the customers want. They can sell as few as five or 10 blades, but can just as well provide the customer with 2,000 blades.
In fact, the company carried out a survey recently, in which they asked customers what they saw the value in Stumabo was, besides the quality of the blades they manufacture, and the first thing that came out was ‘the service’. That, says Rombauts, translates into the fact that clients think and feel that they can rely on Stumabo when in need of assistance, regardless of their position on the globe.
Reshaping the French fry industry
FAM has a long tradition of designing and producing machines for the French fry industry. In fact, in the words of Guy Baeten, the Belgian company has also changed this industry, as in 1995 it was the first to launch the high-capacity French fry cutter/dicer. Normally, he continues, in a potato processing line there was a battery of machines that were dicing and on the other side of the line a battery of machines cutting French fries at a certain capacity. What FAM did in order to reduce floor space and increase the capacity was to design one machine that would make both the fries and the dice at triple the capacity of the then-existing equipment. Therefore, from having eight dicers and eight French fry cutters in a typical processing facility, i.e., 16 machines altogether, suddenly the job could be performed using only five machines, at a higher capacity. This was indeed a revolution and the name of said equipment was the ILC 2, which FAM sold in great numbers.
Thanks to that breakthrough 20 years ago, FAM acquired a special position in the potato processing industry, as almost the entire market eventually converted to this machine. FAM currently has around 75 per cent market share in Europe for French fry and dicing applications, all of that thanks to partnerships with companies such as Aviko, Agristo, McCain and Lamb Weston, who have been and are still using their machines.
