Florigo specialises in the design and manufacture of frying technology for large and medium-sized snack and french fry processing lines, including washing, de-stoning, peeling, slicing, blanching, drying, frying, cooling and freezing equipment.
Food Technology Centre
As part of the merger, tna plans to expand into the processing sector and will move to a bigger manufacturing facility in Woerden within the next six months.
Under the leadership of Bob Fritz, director, business development, tna, the two companies have restructured their management division with six heads; Tim Reardon, group solutions manager, processing the Americas; Henk Boon, group solutions manager, processing EMEIA; John van Duin, group solutions manager, processing, Asia Pacific; Luc Jan Wolpert, group sales manager, processing; Tjeerd Boomsma, calculator/KAM coordinator and Kees Van Manen, after-market manager.
It has also launched a Food Technology Centre working with Arnaud Jansse, application engineer, Florigo.
“In the past, Florigo had a direct selling model, working with agents or direct with customers to sell equipment. We have restructured the team so all the tna sales people make the initial contact with customers and the six management heads are our product experts,” Fritz told FoodProdcutionDaily.
“The jobs are divided geographically and with their specific skill sets in addition to that we have created a multi-dimensional structure.
Fritz is tna’s go-to man for all upcoming acquisitions and moves the company through the first part of the transition process. He is currently in negotiations with four companies for potential mergers.
“We like to understand the business before we go in. We take a good look at what they do well and what we do well and what is the best combination of those,” he said.
Negotiations underway with four companies
“In the most recent acquisition with Florigo, it had a lot of expertise that tna can learn from and we will work on those over the next 18 months. Florigo historically came from a true manufacturing environment involved in making machinery, a lot of tna’s history is from outsourcing.
“We have key contracts in Australia and overseas where assembly parts come in, it’s a different skillset to what is outsourced. Florigo may build one fryer over a period of 12 months, they have good costing systems.
“We’ve currently four companies we are trying to work with for acquisitions. We need to build up a plan as to where that company will go in the future.”
He added the next challenge for tna is moving into the processing arena because there are a lot of things it wants to change.
“We see a big future in the evolution of the processing industry, in the sense that a lot of it is dominated by heat and control and customers are seeking an alternative,” he said.
“We have always been driven by technology and we see a lot of opportunities to change things and try them differently. When you look at machinery today the equipment is fragmented divided into specific tasks. The way we look at it is why can’t you have one control instead of 10.
“A lot of things are done within this industry because they have historically been done that way. That’s a red flag to because we want to get in there and tear it apart. Some of the drivers that lock us into certain things can be taken away, which gives us an opportunity to try new things.”
Fritz said it wants to see a big increase in throughput, streamlining and simple potato handling on the front end.
“When you look at a lot of these processes (freezers, cool rooms and dryers) they are horrendously inefficient, with a whole load of waste and energy disappearing through the roof. Take a potato, for example, you fry it, heat it up, then cool it down but these processes need to challenged,” he added.
“We plan to strip it back, get someone in from a creative design agency that knows nothing about the whole process and ask them how they would design a piece of technology.
“When you build a company vision, it’s never about buying or selling machine parts, it’s where to take it to another level or place. None of the deals we have done have been about money but more about what we can do together and take it to a new level. Everyone gets excited about that.”