What sorts of goat’s cheese do you sell?
Charlotte van Lit: Our goat’s cheese is prepared according to traditional recipes and is deliciously fresh and soft. We offer a wide selection of flavours and weights. It is available as rolls, slices, spreadable cheeses, crumbled goat’s cheese, Bûche (white mould cheese in roll), Camembert and Brie.
Our products are available in the Netherlands in specialist cheese shops, supermarkets, the hospitality industry and wholesalers. Our cheeses and curds are exported worldwide.
How did it all begin?
van Lit: In the mid-1980s, brothers François and Arjan de Jong started out by milking the goats on their father’s farm. Goat farming for milk wasn’t common at the time, so they were among the pioneers.
In 1995, they decided to process cream cheese (curds) from their own goat’s milk, and a year later Kaasmakerij (meaning cheese producers) de Jong was founded.
It was so successful that the next step was to process even more goat’s milk supplied by other farms. Since then, the company has not only processed its own milk, but has bought in milk from other goat farmers. All cheesemaking activities, however, are still undertaken by the family.
In the early days, production was only to produce fresh goat’s cream cheese in bulk. However, by the end of the 1990s, soft goat’s cheese was added and the range expanded quickly.
A new building for the processing of soft cheese was built, the milk brought in from suppliers increased explosively, and new staff hired. In just five years, from 1996 to 2001, production increased from about a million litres to five million litres.
How many goat farms do you work with today?
van Lit: About 13 goat farms currently supply the company with about nine million litres of milk every year. Kaasmakerij de Jong changed its name to DeJong Cheese in July 2011 to serve both national and international clients.
What are the more special varieties you have on offer?
van Lit: We offer natural, fresh goat’s cheese logs and variants with honey, fine herbs, cranberry and walnut and fenugreek. We also produce packs of fresh goat’s cheese with bacon and wrapped in pastry, as well as crumbled goat’s cheese, goat’s Brie and Camembert.
The sliced goat’s cheese in portion packs for sandwiches or snacks comes in four flavours: natural, honey, cranberry and walnut-fenugreek. It suits both home use and foodservice, as one portion can be used while the rest remains refrigerated and fresh.
It is available in three weights: 7g-27mm, 23g-40mm and 35g-60mm.
We make spreadable goats cheese in small 150g tubs, in natural, honey, paprika and fine herb variants. It’s delicious on bread, in sandwiches, on toast, with vegetable snacks and for cooking applications. Importantly, it contains 30% less fat than regular goat’s cheese.
The crumbled goat’s cheese in 100g and 500g retail and foodservice packaging sprinkles easily for new style salads, pizzas pastas, oven dishes or soup toppings.
Our newest release, SuperCheese, is a little outside our traditional base, but is tremendously popular. We developed a delicious fresh cream cheese with leek and chives based on cow’s milk. This SuperCheese is available in 150g tubs and also 1kg and 3kg tubs.
What about certification?
van Lit: DeJong Cheese places great value on quality and food safety. We strive to produce high-quality and safe products. In order to guarantee this quality, we place high standards on the production processes in our cheesemaking facility, as well as on the milk supplied by farms and any processing of the ?milk before it reaches us.
DeJong Cheese meets all the requirements of Dutch and European regulations governing hygiene and food safety. We are monitored by the Centraal Orgaan voor Kwaliteitsaangelegenheden in de Zuivel (COKZ – the Netherlands Controlling Authority for Milk and Milk Products). Every certified dairy product has an EU number stamp indicating the company’s number and country of origin. We are recognised by the Dutch government under the number NL Z1977 EG.
We started compiling a manual in 2001 to gain certification according to the BRC (British Retail Consortium) Guidelines for Food Safety. We have been certified since 2002.
The BRC is comparable to the Centraal Bureau Levensmiddelen (Dutch Food Retail Association) in the Netherlands. This certification has developed into a globally recognised food safety standard and has been awarded to over 8,000 food companies in more than 80 countries.
What’s next for DeJong Cheese?
van Lit: For the future, DeJong Cheese has a lot in store. We will continue working on the innovation of new and recently developed products.
Each day, we create new ideas for products, production processes, marketing and all kinds of innovative developments. In our office, we are a small group of people working closely together, so we can develop and react quickly to new ideas.
Furthermore, our SuperCheese will launch this spring with an online surprise in the Netherlands, and hopefully will spread over the internet to other countries. Look out for it!
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