As an independent family business with a history dating back more than 130 years, we think in generations rather than years. We invest in long-term collaborations to make our supply chains shorter, more efficient and more sustainable.
We prefer to build for the future together with strategic partners who are pursuing the same ambitions and who always have the customer's wishes as a starting point.
It's our ambition to maintain long-term partnerships with customers, suppliers and dairy farmers. All partners have lasting benefit from the collaboration. Our goals:
Entrepreneurial go-getters work at Royal A-ware. We also show this in the field of sustainability. Below are a number of practical examples of our (inter)national collaborations. Read more examples here.
Our partnership with New Zealand dairy cooperative Fonterra began in 2015 when Royal A-ware opened its cheese factory and Fonterra opened an ingredients factory in Heerenveen. Fonterra processes the whey released from our cheese production and, since 2020, also from our mozzarella production. We also produce in Heerenveen, in cooperation with Fonterra, various cream products for patisserie and culinary applications that they purchase and sell.
Sietske Oosterbaan - Production Manager Cream at Royal A-ware Heerenveen talks about our collaboration with Fonterra in this video.
A good example of long-term collaboration is our partnership with Ahold/Delhaize, which goes back more than 40 years. We started cutting and packaging cheese for Dutch supermarket giant Albert Heijn, followed by Delhaize le Lion in Belgium and Albert CZ in Czechia. In 2008 we began developing innovative tapas: tapenades, spreads, dips and various cold and oven-ready tapas snacks made with fish, meat and vegetables for Ahold Delhaize. A good example of this partnership is the development of the Better for Cow, Nature and Farmer programme that we started with Albert Heijn in 2018. The video at the left explains this programme.
In 2019, the partnership with Tirlán, Ireland's largest dairy cooperative, was set up. This partnership includes the joint construction and operation of a sustainable cheese factory in Belview, County Kilkenny, in the south-east of Ireland.
The new cheese factory will boost employment in this region of Ireland. From 2024, we expect to make at least 50,000 tons of Dutch cheeses here, such as Gouda and Edam. You can see more about this collaboration in the video on the right.