Back in 1934, the founder of the Vandemoortele Group, Constant Vandemoortele, was already aware of the benefits of soya. 40 years later, his grandson Philippe Vandemoortele was so convinced of the soya bean’s nutritious power that he perfected a unique and natural process for making soya milk.
Philippe had a vision to tackle the nutrition problem in the Third World. An early project saw the construction of a soya plant on the island of Madagascar in 1980. Unfortunately, for logistical reasons, the project had to be discontinued.
But increased awareness of food issues and concerns meant that creating a soya-based business in Europe was a very real possibility.
To this end, the Vandemoortele Group set up a separate division specialising in natural soya-based food and in 1980 Alpro was born.
In 1989 Alpro built Europe’s largest and most modern production unit for soya food based on the UHT process, situated in Wevelgem, Belgium. In 1996, Alpro took over Sojinal and thereby acquired an extra soya milk production unit in Issenheim, France. In 2000 Alpro built a brand new soya milk factory in Kettering, UK.
To complete Alpro's range of soya products, we took over the Tofu producer SoFine Foods (Landgraaf, The Netherlands) in 2006.
To this day Alpro continues to grow as a European market leader and as a fair food partner.