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Press release
VAN HEES GmbH · Kurt-van-Hees-Straße 1 · 65396 Walluf
Phone 06123-7080 · Fax 06123-708240
Walluf, 2010
About VAN HEES
The hub of the VAN HEES Group, VAN HEES GmbH is registered in Walluf, a village in the Rheingau region of Germany. VAN HEES is a medium-sized family business that has specialized in developing, manufacturing, and marketing spices and seasonings as well as seasoning blends, herbs, marinades, emulsions and flavorings.
Founded in 1947 by Kurt van Hees in Wiesbaden-Biebrich, the company now employs a total of more than four hundred staff members in nine different countries. Built in the 1960s, the Walluf im Rheingau facility is still under constant expansion and modernization. Subsidiaries were founded in France, Belgium and the Netherlands after the founder's son, Hendrik van Hees, took the reins. After his timely death, Brigitte, Ilonka, and, since 2009, Julia van Hees have taken the helm as owner-directors of the company, which has remained a family-owned business to this day. The other directors are Jürgen Georg Hüniken (Chairman) and Dr. Fred Sieweke.
Kurt van Hees pioneered in food phosphates for meat processing and went on to develop many other outstanding patented additives, many of which are still indispensable to meat production. Subsidiaries in France, Belgium and the Netherlands were opened in the early 1960s. The French Forbach facility was established in the early 1980s. This was followed by the acquisition of van Uelft, a manufacturer of flavorings, spices and colorings in Dortmund, and the Wichartz spice mill in Wuppertal.
In 2006, VAN HEES took over the commercial activities of LPF (Les Produits Français), a French supply company specializing in the butcher trade; apart from that, VAN HEES and its partner, Bart Das, commissioned a plant in South Africa. Investment in modernizing production facilities continued at every location; the largest single investment was a silo expansion project in Walluf to increase the share of pneumatically transported raw materials.
VAN HEES keeps customer proximity across the world with service centers in the USA, Russia, China, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland as well as distributors in every part of the world, an international network enabling the company to tap into lower-priced sources of raw materials while maintaining worldwide knowledge transfer. VAN HEES currently supplies forty-five countries across the globe with its products.
The company was awarded the highest-level IFS (International Food Standard) certificate in 2006. VAN HEES produces according to HACCP criteria and DIN/ISO 9001 – another sign of the importance that the company places on quality and safety. The company constantly invests in research and development to ensure continuous optimization in meat product manufacturing. The company has established a state-of-the-art technology center towards recipe optimization, product analysis and individual development, but also to train customers from all over the world. VAN HEES has a staff of specialist consultants addressing meat product manufacturing issues as well as extensions to the products and product ranges directly at the premises of the company's customers. After all, the company's activities are highly intertwined with meat research. The "Kurt van Hees Forschungs-Förderung" funding program supports general meat research and project work.
Contact at VAN HEES:
Robert Becht, Telefon: 06123-708-178, E-Mail: