Meet d'Arta Group in Belgium

Meet d'Arta Group in Belgium


​The d'Arta Group is a Belgium company and a global player in the development, processing, and supplier of fresh frozen products.
Founded in 1988, the company has continued to grow and flourish to expand throughout Europe with sites in Belgium, Portugal, UK, and Italy. D'Arta has succeeded in creating jobs for about 1200 people. The company earnings are approximately 240 million euro per year.

The company, specializing in frozen vegetables, fruits, and ready meals, was founded by Jean-Pierre De Backere, together with his business partner, Johan Talpe, and is now under the leadership of the next generation of each family with shared ownership among each founder's two sons. Pieter and Steve De Backere share CEO responsibilities with Dries and Karel Talpe.

​About 24 years ago I started my career in d’Arta. I graduated as an engineer to support my father, Jean-Pierre De Backere, in technical aspects of the business. My first experience with cutting machines was on a very low level. The cutting of vegetables 1990’s was limited to cubes and slices. We were working with different local cutting machine suppliers. As our product line continued to grow to meet the demands of the market and we started production in Portugal, we were confronted with the need to make some serious business decisions. Different suppliers meant different standards between all of them, such as metric versus imperial. As our company continued to expand, we needed to be able to have interchangeable parts between locations and interchangeable cutting machinery to create standard practices. Spare parts created by different suppliers were obviously not interchangeable with each other.

We keenly chose to work with Urschel as our supplier. Keeping machines standard at each facility, interchangeable cutting devices, ease of obtaining spares and knives in groups, and the experience Urschel brings made it an easy decision for our existing, and especially as we expanded into the UK and Italy.

Certain vegetable campaigns, due to the climate, are not what we had anticipated. With Urschel, we have the flexibility to make changes as we adjust to running different products and cuts between our different sites.

As a supplier, Urschel is known worldwide and used by many other successful food processors. With Urschel machinery, we are confident in different cut sizes as we take on new potential client requests.

​– Pieter De Backere, Co-CEO, d'Arta Group
D'Arta currently has over 25 Urschel cutting machines. Urschel service supports d'Arta through performing routine preventative maintenance and assisting the company when new settings or options become available to keep the machines running optimally.
 
Explore Urschel benefits to improve your processing line by connecting with your local contact. As the global leader in food cutting technology, Urschel delivers worldwide sales and support wherever food is commercially processed.