Belgian bakery brand La Lorraine, continues to invest in Turkey. The company, which is offering bread, croissants, and donuts produced in its 58.000 m2 facility with a daily capacity of 80 tons in Manisa which was put into service in 2016 to the Turkish market which it got into five years ago, started to export the traditional Turkish pastries to the world.
Burak Deniz
General Manager of La Lorraine Turkey
Belgium’s 80-year old company and popularized with its bread and bakery products, La Lorraine, has located Turkey as a central production base. The company opened its Manisa factory with single line production to produce bread; later on, it added baguette line. In 2019, the company added two more production lines. In addition to bread, croissant, and muffins, the company has begun to deliver frozen Turkish pastry to markets and abroad.
“We have completed our fifth year in Turkey. With the additional 25 million Euro investment until the end of the year, we invested 100 million Euro investment to Turkey within 5 years. As La Lorraine, we trust in Turkey and will continue our investment. We made Turkey as the central hub for the Middle East and North Africa and decided to export to these neighboring countries. Currently, we export to Iraq, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Cyprus actively. Thanks to the new deal, the final consumers will meet with La Lorraine products via Lulu – Dubai’s chain retail brand. As of 2020, we will start exporting to the North Africa. Our pastry products have been exported to Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, and Germany among other European countries. We aim to expand our export volume by increasing the country and product range in the coming period,” Burak Deniz, General Manager of La Lorraine Turkey, said.
WE WILL INTRODUCE LOCAL TASTES TO THE WORLD
Burak Deniz mentioned that they support local production. “We procure yeast and wheat locally. In our production, we use high quality flour produced by mixing wheats from different region of Turkey. We have been working on adding more products including local flavors to our range. We would like to introduce them to the global world such as Italy’s Ciabatta and Spain’s Pan Gallego bread,” he said.
Saying that Turkey tops the bread consumption with 185 kilograms per person annually in the Europe, Burak Deniz said that “Turkey is a young country and has been developing and open to change. In this sense, Turkey’s potential is huge. We have introduced new products like Tiger and Onion Bread to Turkey and gathered great appreciation. Thanks to Bake-Off technology, the customer always buys fresh products. We deliver frozen products to sale and service points; they bake according to their needs. We prevent source waste thanks to our products that contain no preservative. According to the report released by TUBITAK in September, the value of annual waste is equivalent to 1.7 billion. In order to tell the scale of this waste, one can build 47 general hospitals or 170 schools. While we add value to our economy and people, they remember us with fresh and tasty products.”
“We aimed and offered healthier, quality, and delicious products to our consumers in bakery products that are the most important and indispensable element of the food chain in our country. We will continue our understanding of quality and innovative products with R&D and new line investments,” he added. Deniz underlined that the company contributed significantly to decrease the waste as you can bake the product at the right time and amount thanks to frozen product technology.
DONUT AND CROISSANT DRAW INTEREST MORE THAN OTHERS
Burak Deniz said that what distinguishes La Lorraine from other company is the quality. “Quality is the golden rule for us. Our products undergo many quality control processes from production to cooking. During the regular inspections conducted on the samples selected during the production process, the weight, size, appearance, odor, and taste of the samples are checked and products that are not of the desired quality are not offered to consumers.
Our range of products include baguette, small bread varieties, rolls, Tiger bread, Ramadan pita, plump bread, sandwich and hamburger loaves, croissant, muffin, and donut. We added simit, buns and pastries, bread with sourdough, rye, whole grains to our range. We offer some products to our consumers by adapting them to Turkish taste. Among our desserts, Turkish people showed more interest to donuts and croissant with crispy structure and golden color,” he said.