Nutritious and tasty products

Safe products are a prerequisite for contributing to consumers’ health. All our production sites are certified in accordance with the internationally recognised food safety standard FSSC 22000. 

In order to further guarantee food safety, our employees take compulsory food safety training. From 2021, this training has been compulsory for all employees, including head office staff, temps, and cleaning staff. In 2021, more than 85% of our employees successfully completed this training. In addition, we take food safety measures at our sites on an ongoing basis. We invested in improved metal detection in Gorinchem, worked on product improvements in Scharsterbrug, and implemented improvements following standardisations in Barneveld. Additionally, we are also designing a new way of working for production at external sites.

In 2021, we received 0.20 product quality complaints per 1,000 tonnes of product. This figure is down on 2020 (0.30) and means we have hit our target of no more than 0.25 product quality complaints per 1,000 tonnes. We handle our quality complaints in detail and focus additionally on commonly occurring complaints. In response to such complaints, we get to the bottom of what exactly causes the complaints, so that we can prevent them in the future. Our target for 2022 continues to be to stay below 0.25 product quality complaints per 1,000 tonnes of product.

Customer complaints come in at and are coordinated by our Customer Service department. Complaints are registered in a central system and the relevant department is asked to investigate the complaint, evaluate it, and draw up and implement improvement measures. We determine the effectiveness of our complaints management system every year. An improvement point that we will be working on over the coming year is to further improve the analyses to track down the underlying reasons behind commonly occurring complaints.

At Vreugdenhil, customer satisfaction is our primary objective. In order to serve our customers well, we make sure they have fixed points of contact and we rapidly follow up on their queries internally. Our customers always know who to turn to with queries about prices, product samples, or sustainability. We offer regular market updates to interested customers. In these updates, we go into relevant market developments based on information from our customers, suppliers, and other sources. We do this to support our customers to make better choices in their product procurement practices. 

In 2022, we are planning to run a customer survey to gain more insight into our customers’ needs. In order to gain greater insight into our customers’ satisfaction with our collaboration, we are going to adopt the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as our metric. We would also like to engage with all of our customers on sustainability. Our aim is to make sustainability a fixture during all our customer visits from 2024 onwards.

"Sustainability is an increasingly hot topic among our customers and we can really add value for them in this respect"

"We regularly team up with our customers to develop new products, such as for specific purposes, for affordable alternatives, and for various other needs. We also enrich our products with vitamins and minerals. Our flexibility and entrepreneurship give us a perfect ability to respond to our customers’ needs in our product development. For one of our customers, for example, we processed free range milk separately at one of our plants, so as to guarantee that the milk powder was made exclusively of free range milk. And the purchase of a factory in Putten in early 2022 allows us to also offer new concepts for relatively small volumes. This will make us even more flexible in the future."

"We also want to work together with our customers on product development in a sustainability context. Seeing as customer needs and product development are often about seizing opportunities in the market, about niches, and about where value can be added, Vreugdenhil wants to invite its customers to work together with us to accelerate our products’ transition to sustainability."

"As a company, it is also important that we be transparent towards customers and show them what we are already doing and what we can offer them. Sustainability is an increasingly hot topic among our customers and we can really add value for them in this respect. This can be about making their products more sustainable, but also about challenges in the supply chain."

Every day, we work hard on the development of new products, which is a domain where collaboration with our customers is becoming increasingly important. In our product development practices, our focus is on four different themes: i) nutritious products, whereby we enrich milk powders with vitamins and minerals. ii) healthier products that contain less sugar and unsaturated fats. iii) affordable alternatives to existing products to make our products accessible to more people. iv) products for specific purposes, such as baby food, tube feeding, and sports nutrition. 

While the emphasis in product development is often on one of these four themes, it is key to never lose sight of the other themes. There is, for example, great demand for affordable alternatives. Within this theme, it is still also important to, for example, guarantee the safety of a product from a health perspective, such as in terms of the amount of added sugars.

In 2021, seven new products were developed for our customers. The focus was mainly on affordability, while children’s food also received a lot of attention. Our objective for 2022 is to develop two new products that have been enriched or produced with more sustainable ingredients, such as vitamins, minerals, less sugar, or less unsaturated fats.

By enriching milk powders with the right vitamins and minerals, we contribute to the fight against hidden hunger. In 2021, approximately 15% of our own products in the African market consisted of enriched products, which is comparable to the percentage in 2020. Our objective for 2022 is to supply to two new customers who make ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF) and/or focus on combating malnutrition.

"Collaboration is an important part of our new sustainability agenda"

"Over the past few years, we have taken good steps by introducing own-brand enriched milk powder in places like Africa, launching a new affordable brand called Holland Horizon, increasing our product portfolio for the market for milk powder for specific purposes, and continuously improving the quality of our products and services. Needless to say, we will keep working along these lines and continue to develop healthier and more nutritional products for new and existing markets together with our customers. Aside from that, we are seeing the world around us change, which requires us to take a number of new steps."

"Many of the regions where our customers operate are plagued by poverty. We want to offer our customers affordable concepts or enriched products. We do that by, for example, engaging with customers who are working to fight malnutrition."

"Additionally, we also face various global challenges in areas such as climate change and raw material shortages. We will make sustainability and our strategy a permanent focus point in our customer visits to inspire others and seek collaboration where relevant and logical. Over the coming year, we will conduct a customer satisfaction survey on the various aspects of our products and services; this will include a focus on sustainability. This will create a basis from which we can have talks with customers and continue to work together on improvement and satisfaction on both sides."

"With our global supply chain, through which we reach consumers in many countries, combined with the high quality of Dutch milk, and our capacity to respond quickly to changing conditions, we can make a great impact in the supply chain. Our customer-facing departments will have an important role over the coming years, so that we can keep bringing everyone the best of milk."