Home  ›  About Us  ›  History

History

Deftly, Pieter Huig Sluimers navigates his loaded vegetable cart through the streets of Rotterdam. It’s 1963. Huig, with nine years of work experience as a painter’s apprentice and three years as a painter, laid down the brushes to work at greengrocer Kooiman in Barendrecht.

The outlook is promising. In a year, Huig is inducted and earns a hundred guilders a week, a hefty salary for the time. But Huig has bigger ambitions: he wants to take over Kooiman. For 20,000 florins, he gets the car and equipment; it takes him three years of work under commission. “When peddling at Hoogvliet, you made four cents profit per kilo of potatoes,” he tells his granddaughter 50 years later. “When you had a steady customer base, profits could go up to six cents a kilo.”

familie Sluimers
Grandpa Sluimers and children
Grandma Sluimers, Aunt Hillie and Aunt Tineke dip strawberries

Hard work is no stranger to Sluimers

Day after day, he grabs his gear before dawn to sell his vegetables at the “mart. On Tweede Barendrechtseweg, the vegetable store is run by wife Corrie. Son Jan is conscripted, and with increasing demand from the craft bakeries to deliver apples peeled, son-in-law Jan suggests that there might be a market for processed fruit.

No sooner said than done. December 1990, a dozen people take up the peeling knife to meet that demand. The principle of the first apple processing plant in Europe is laid. Whereas on some days the whole family peels apples by hand to meet this demand, Jan soon taps a hand machine. The demand for apple processing is growing, and the family business is responding by purchasing semi-automatic peeling machines. The garage on Barendrechtseweg will be converted into commercial space. This is how the first apples are peeled and delivered.

Trade expands

A fully automatic peeling line is installed in the shed, where potatoes used to be stored. Soon the company is growing at the seams. New premises are being purchased on the Industrieweg in Barendrecht. With steady growth comes further professionalization, leading in 2002 to the establishment of a state-of-the-art, new high-capacity facility under the name VZ Apple Industries in Marknesse. When the names of De Hoekse Waard and VZ Apple Industries merged into VS Apple Industries B.V. in 2005, the locations could not be left behind. Since 2008, VS Apple Industries has operated entirely out of Marknesse, Flevoland.

Until, in the hot summer of 2019, a devastating fire surrounds it. The entire property is in ashes, which is an immediate reason to flesh out future plans. Grandsons Arjan and Hugo de Vente, the third generation, take over day-to-day management. The new construction of the company is committed to further professionalization. Almost two years later, the first apples roll off the conveyor belt again, the first fruit fillings are delivered and customers know how to find us again. We are grateful for that.