Vaessen-Schoemaker acquires Polish functional ingredients company

26 Sep 2018

Vaessen-Schoemaker has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Agerso. Katowice area-based, Agersol is a Polish producer of functional ingredients for meat applications and alginate-gel based casings.

Vaessen-Schoemaker has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Agerso. Katowice area-based, Agersol is a Polish producer of functional ingredients for meat applications and predominantly focuses on the production of alginate-gel based casings. Agersol is said to have a strong presence in Central Eastern Europe and North-America.

Through the acquisition, Vaessen-Schoemaker says it adds highly innovative alginate (casings) technology to its portfolio of functional ingredients for meat, vegetarian, seafood and bakery application segments and is able to better serve its customers active in these markets. With over 70 years of experience in the field of functional solutions, casings activities have been an important part of Vaessen-Schoemaker’s heritage, the company notes. Its predecessors owned a large artificial casings processing company in The Netherlands and a natural casings factory in Portugal. With this heritage and the full support of the experts of Agersol, Vaessen-Schoemaker believes it is able to further grow with innovative and high-quality casings solutions.

The transaction gives Vaessen-Schoemaker access to another differentiating technology platform, it says, and allows Agersol to utilise and benefit from the strong commercial European network of Vaessen-Schoemaker. Agersol will continue to operate as a stand-alone production company to keep the focus on the development of alginate-based casings.

Ad de Haas, Managing Director and owner of Vaessen-Schoemaker said: “Alginate casing solutions are designed for sausage production using co-extrusion and are an alternative to other systems such as natural casings, collagen casings, and form the only existing basis for a purely vegetarian casing solution. With both the market for sausages as the market for vegetarian products showing strong growth, the potential is significant.”

Tomasz Wcislo, Director of Agersol said: “With the increasing demand for more convenience foods, our AgerGel has proven to be instrumental in meat snacks, with great appearance such as creating good looking twisted and linked sausage ends, and thereby outperforming other solutions.”