Meurens Natural opens €15m factory
The company put the second facility down to strong growth in recent years which has meant its historic production site in Herve was “overloaded”.
Completed within the 12-month schedule, manufacturing has already begun at the new site located in Thimister-Clermont in the Belgian province of Liege. An additional 10 employees have been taken on.
The company now has three production lines in two factories where it manufactures a range of cereal-based syrups from rice, oat, wheat, manioc, spelt and malted barley as well as fruit-based ingredients date, fig and prune syrup.
Under the Natu and organic Sipal ranges, these ingredients provide sweetness, flavour and colour to products as well as added texture such as crunch in biscuits, cereal bars and breakfast cereals or viscosity in drinks, yoghurts, sauces and ice creams.
These have increased in popularity in recent years as clean label alternatives to sugar and other sweeteners such as glucose syrup, the firm said.
Earlier this year, it launched an organic hydrolysed oat flour.
Meurens Natural says it favours a production process that is free from the chemicals traditionally used by other sugar manufacturers, such as sulphuric acid, sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate.
“Not using a refining process also guarantees that we do not use ion exchange resins for demineralising sweetened or fruit juices, or the use of sulphur dioxide for stopping the oxidation of syrups," it says.
