Hordijk Zaandam and vegetable slicer Royal Vezet have been working together for more than 25 years. During this time, an intensive cooperation has developed, based on mutual trust. Successful product innovations have already been achieved together, such as the introduction of the meal salad. An important goal of the cooperation is to serve and continue to surprise the joint customer, Albert Heijn.
Royal Vezet’s buyer Sander van Veen has been a regular contact and sparring partner for eight years. Sander: “Product developments and packaging innovations are moving fast. Particularly for the products we supply as Vezet: fresh-cut fruit and vegetables. Especially the type of packaging, the materials and their technology.
We regularly receive requests from Albert Heijn for a new product. We work on them together. Then either Hordijk’s product developers or our product developers come up with a new idea. We and Hordijk also take our separate initiatives to improve and adapt products.
Quality first
Sander is happy with Hordijk’s approach and the quality they stand for. “For us, delivery reliability is the most important thing. And Hordijk lives up to that. This is followed by quality, innovation and, last but not least, price. We keep each other on our toes. For example, in order to reduce the amount of plastic we use, we produce lighter and therefore thinner trays. This means that the product may be more fragile. Quality is also very important. The thinner the tray, the smaller the margin for error. We then work together to find a solution. It is always a compromise between good tray production and trouble-free processing.
One great example is an innovation that has helped reduce plastic by 18 per cent, saving 200,000 kilograms.
We have made the packaging thinner and slightly lower. As a result, the Albert Heijn crates now fit two trays on top of each other instead of one. This also results in a nice CO2 reduction. Together we are working towards a bright future where we continue to take steps towards more circular and sustainable packaging solutions.