Letter from the Benelux
The Belgian fried has its museum in Brussels, its temples, the legendaries fritkotslocated everywhere in the kingdom, its jokes (“A Belgian cannibal is a guy who eats raw fries”) and, also, its legends. Like the one that wants French fries would actually have been invented in the 18th centurye century by Walloons, which, deprived of fishing during the cold weather, cut potatoes in the shape of small fish and plunged them into boiling fat. Today, the production of fries has mainly become, for former Flemish patatiers, a formidable vein which allows them to build industrial empires and to compete with the largest fortunes of the country.
The Clarebout company, founded in 1987 in Flanders-Western, by Raf Clarebout and its son Jan, today at the controls, is thus the European leader and the third world producer of frozen fries, behind the Canadian McCain and the American Lamb Weston. According to A recent Flemish daily survey Standaardthe annual gross profit of Clarebout Potatoes borders on 450 million euros and the company would weigh between 4 and 6 billion euros. Agristo, also in Flanders-Western, is fifth in this ranking.
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Source: Lemonde