Export companies of dairy products from the Europe
Agral S.A. export company of dairy product from Belgium
Passion for butter
Agral Butter produces butter for consumers.
Passion, know-how and flexibility: the keywords that make Agral Butter the ideal partner to develop a unique butter in respect of tradition.
Agral Butter is first and foremost an authentic passion for butter: respect for a traditional product that makes natural flavour its intrinsic quality.
For more than 40 years, Agral Butter has been developing considerable know-how enabling it to offer a wide range of butters to different types of customers in complete respect for the natural raw ingredients.
Firm in its understanding that each market is different and consumer trends evolve over time, Agral Butter chooses to be extremely flexible and open in its approach, making it the ideal partner through which to develop a butter than meets all your needs and expectations.
About Agral Butter
Agral Butter produces butter for consumers. Passion, know-how and flexibility: the keywords that make Agral Butter the ideal partner to develop a unique butter in respect of tradition.
Passion
Agral Butter is first and foremost an authentic passion for butter: respect for a traditional product that makes natural flavour its intrinsic quality. At Agral Butter, we know that the careful selection of ingredients, together with a masterful production of butter are the essential factors to ensure the production of quality butter.
Know-how
Butter producers for 40 years, Agral Butter today boasts considerable know-how and offers a wide range of butters to different types of customers: artisan butter, hand-packaged butter, reduced-fat butter, aromatised butter and many more besides. And it does all this in complete respect for the natural raw ingredients and the artisan techniques used for certain production methods.
Flexibility
Firm in its understanding that each market is different and consumer trends evolve over time, Agral Butter chooses to be extremely flexible and open in its approach. This positive attitude earns Agral Butter a top position as the ideal partner to develop a butter that meets all your needs and expectations. Agral Butter offers an extensive range of butters designed to meet the specific needs of the consumers of each market and offer packaging that varies from the practical butter in the dish to that supplied in aluminium foil and according to the requirements of the various different European countries.
The values
Agral Butter sells its own brands on the Belgian market. These brands are part of the cultural heritage of many families.
Les Coteaux is one of the best-selling products on the market. The logo featuring the hazelnuts recalls the nutty flavour found in the butter produced from fresh cream.
Lucien Massaux, Jean-Marie Cabay and Marc Guiselin, to mention just some of those who have helped build up the fame of Agral Butter, creators of butters in parchment paper, packaged by hand in the great farming tradition of butter-making.
The brands
With Héritage 1466, Agral Butter also offers a brand of butter available in numerous formats and recipes for export. The Héritage 1466 brand is available to Agral Butter customers not wanting to develop specific packaging.
It is available in a wide range of variants, as a pat or in the dish, with 82% fat content or in a reduced-fat version. With Héritage 1466, Agral Butter is sure to have the multi-lingual packaging you need for your market.
The history
From a hangar to an ultra-modern production plant…
If we start our story off in the time-honoured tradition of “Once upon a time…”, we could continue with “… in a little hangar…”.
The story starts back in 1971, when the company’s current director, Jean-Marie Cabay took over the business of Lucien Massaux, a well-known figure in the region of Charleroi.
One thing led to another and the business gradually developed, putting butter-making know-how to good end. The success enjoyed amongst its consumers meant that Agral Butter soon found itself a little short of space in its production plant, despite having already moved over the years.
The resumption in 1998 of the business of S.A. Godefroid-Seron and its brand known to Belgian consumers as “Les Côteaux” gave new life to Agral Butter.
In 1997, Agral Butter began construction a production site in the industrial district of Courcelles. The site will be opened in September 1999.
In 2003, a production line of reduced-fat butter was installed in the workshops.
Commercial procedures, and specifically for export, rapidly became a success and business developed from year to year.
In the meantime and for the first time, Agral Butter achieved in 2005 certification by I.F.S. (International Food Standard), and in 2007 B.R.C. (British Retail Consortium). Producing more than 10,000 tonnes of butter a year, the 2009 construction of new workshops on the Courcelles site successfully doubled the company’s surface area.
The new site, started-up late 2010, optimised circulation of flows within the company and enabled a reasoned use of energy. New prospects in terms of flexibility became available to Agral Butter, giving it the chance to write new pages in its history and pursue its growth in volumes. Its range of butters has never stopped growing in terms of different recipes and packaging formats.
About Agral Butter
Quality is right at the heart of the Agral Butter priorities (BE CO437 CE).
Our quality procedure puts our customers right at the heart of our focus, ensuring we implement a coherent, effective organisation. This goes hand-in-hand with our desire to progress through butter innovation, with a dynamic quality system.
We have obtained our certifications thanks to the implementation of procedures and compliance with strict standards regarding:
- selection of high quality raw materials
- an environmentally-friendly approach
- risk control
- monitoring of product quality and laboratory analyses
- strict procedures and a permanent audit of the production plants
- not to mention the know-how going back more than 40 years in the formulation and packaging of butter.
The butters
Traditional butter
Classic 82% fat content
Salted/unsalted
The butter contains between 80 and 82% fat depending on whether or not it is salted. This butter is called “full-fat” or “traditional” butter. The selection of raw materials and care we put into every aspect of its production all go towards ensuring a top quality result. The Agral Butter challenge is to produce high quality butter that remains as standardised as possible throughout the year and seasonal changes.
Organic butter
Classic 82% fat content
Salted/unsalted
Organically-farmed
Agral S.A. is authorised Bio BE-BIO-01. Agral Butter offers its organic butter in a salted or unsalted version. These organic butters can be packaged in a wide range of options, as required.
Reduced-fat and healthy butter
Reduced-fat: 60% fat content, 41% fat content
Ultra-light: 20% fat content, 15% fat content
Healthy: Omega 3
Agral Butter produces reduced-fat content butters.
With 60% fat content, our butters are very similar in terms of flavour, texture and practicality to full-fat butter with 82% fat content. Agral Butter has developed a 60% fat content butter referred to as “clean label”.
Reduced-fat or semi-skimmed butter. These butters have 41% fat content and constitute the top segment of reduced-fat butters. They offer all the taste, practicality and virtually indistinguishable texture from full-fat butters with half the fat content. Agral Butter also offers an Omega 3 version.
Ultra-light butter. Market demand is currently for the least fat possible. Agral Butter also produces options with 25%, 20% and 15% fat content. One of our 15% fat content products was included in the Innovation Sial 2014 selection.
Spreadable butter
Practical
From 82% to 15% fat content
Salted/unsalted
Some consumers want a product they can spread straight from the fridge. Agral Butter is proud to offer all the practicality of a spreadable or refrigerator-spreadable or “soft” butter. This prowess is achieved through the careful selection of butter fat and various butter processing steps the secrets of which are closely guarded by Agral Butter.
Aromatised butter
+ herbs and/or spices
Garlic and fine herbs, red spices, BBQ mix
Sweet: chocolate, apricot, etc.
Take some butter, mix it with garlic and fine herbs, and you have a real gourmet product. This know-how in matters or aromatised butters has been extended by Agral Butter to offer a variety of products. The range of savoury butters has now been expanded to include sweet variants and original blends of spices such as aniseed/lemon or curry. These aromatised butters give the consumer new opportunities to enrich his culinary works of art. Giving meat that special touch, making a barbecue slightly more original, enhancing the flavours of a vegetable and daring sweet-savoury combinations are just some of the possibilities offered up by this product category.
The packaging
From its packaging in practical plastic dishes through to more traditional aluminium foil options, with variants organised to meet the demands of the various European countries, Agral Butter is sure to have the butter packaging you require.
One specific characteristic of the business is the mastery of the technique of moulded and semi-hand packed butters, in the spirit of “like on the farm”. This type of packaging incorporates values of the land and authenticity.
Pat of butter
- 125, 200, 225, 250, 300g
- Parallelepipedic packaging
- Aluminium complex
- Adjustable to the formats of the target countries
Aluminium packaging is the most commonly used worldwide for butter. There is therefore no one format. Agral Butter boasts a vast range of options in terms of weights and formats (“French” or “German”). As convenience has taken hold, Agral Butter also offers stronger, tear-proof complexes to make for more practical use.
"Manual" moulded butter
- 125, 250, 500g, 1kg
- Hand-packaged butter
- Generations of know-how
- Premium approach
Hand-moulded butter is the most traditional way of forming butter there is. This time-honoured tradition of packaging butter by hand in simple parchment paper is a farmyard culture. During the last century, all farms were busy churning the cream and transforming it into butter themselves. Hand-packaged butter was then sold direct. Agral Butter has preserved this traditional know-how and continues to offer hand-packaged butter today. This work requires great dexterity and is only done by women. The parchment paper is still used for its authentic feel.
However, a premium version has also proved to be a great success. Butter is hand-packaged in a complex offering a light barrier. Thereafter, it is placed in the bottom of a box and enhanced by a collar.
"Machined" moulded butter
- 250g, 500g, 1kg
- “Hand-packaged” look butter
- Just like generations past
The “machine” moulded butter is the automated version of the hand-packaged butters. It resembles farmyard butters, particularly when packaged in parchment paper. It has the advantage of being more competitively priced than a hand-packaged butter. Agral Butter, with a range to suit everyone.
Butter in a dish
- Plastic dish 200, 225g, 250g
- Hygienic
- Practical
- Modern
Butter in a dish or tub is the practical consumer choice. This packaging is easy to store, hygienic and practical for everyday use. Full-fat butters are available in this packaging, although it is most popular for reduced-fat, spreadable and healthy (Omega 3) options).
Our dishes are available to our customers with no investment on their part.
Mini butter
- Mini dish 7g-10g
- Lidded
Individual packaging makes for a practical solution. Catering, restaurants and groups use these mini portions. It is also the perfect solution for markets where buying power is limited and butter is in demand. Agral Butter has flexible packaging that can be coupled with a wide variety of different butters. Packaging available in our Héritage 1466 brand or to be developed by printing lids.
Butter "fingers"
- Pats, from 100g
- Less demanding in terms of purchase
The finger is a packaged in a 100g format in aluminium complex. It combines the advantages of a competitively-priced packaging with a purchase commitment that is more accessible to consumers. Its weight of 100g is also very popular with aromatised butters.
Roll of butter
- From 100g
- Plastic tube filled with butter
Our rolls of butter are packaged in a transparent plastic complex closed at both ends by metal bands. A self-adhesive label completes the packaging. This packaging option is very flexible in terms of weight. By adapting the roll length, an infinite range of different weights is available. In western Europe, this packaging is often used for aromatised butters (garlic and fine herbs, etc.).
Jar of butter
- Glass jar (100g)
- For aromatised butter
- Reusable
At customer demand, Agral Butter studies and develops new butter packaging options. Agral Butter has been packaging butter in 100g glass jars since 2015, which are found in the conserve industry. This packaging is enhanced by a cardboard collar. Once the butter is finished, the consumer can then reuse the jar.
