Frozen pastry producer Gourmand has recently opened its fourth state-of-the-art production line, coinciding with its 30th anniversary on the market.
The new continuous line increases capacity substantially and makes the croissants, pains au chocolat and swirls even better. The Belgian company, with production in Mouscron, started in 1984 with the production of frozen puffpastry products for retail, food service and bakeries. Gourmand has integrated the working methods of traditional craft bakeries (pre-ferments and resting periods) into a fully automatic pastry preparation process.
Gourmand (BelPastry in the USA) is part of the Dossche family’s group and is well-supported by Dossche Mills (fl our for bakers, biscuits and other human nutrition since 1875), Flinn (heat-treated flour), Mexma Foods (tortillas) and Dossche Feed (animal feed agriculture). Altogether, the group has some 715 employees worldwide. The range of Gourmand products consists primarily of frozen puff pastries. But within this niche, the range is unusually extensive with regard to types, formats, flavours, including croissants, pains au chocolat, swirls, Danish pastry, and much more.
Gourmand is commercially active in more than 35 countries. In addition to the Benelux, Italy and Spain have their own warehouses with storage. This year, a new production line has been put into operation for croissants, pains au chocolat and swirls. Along with the 3 lines already in place, line 4 enables an annual pastry production of 40,000 tons. Gourmand has targeted a turnover of €65 million in 2014.