Perhaps they do not look that complex. A thin cookie or wafer rolled into a tube, a signature stripe spiraled around the length and the inside lined or filled with a variety of flavors, later wrapped in foil and put into a decorated tin.
It might not seem complicated but those steps add up to a product that for many elevates any occasion from something more than just a cup of coffee or a bowl of ice cream.
Those sweet delicacies, Piroulines, sound like a luxury product from Europe, but they are produced with precision right here in Madison County.
“Make every moment magic,” their business cards read.
That old-world charm can be attributed to President and owner of the company, Peter De Beukelaer, who moved his family here from Belgium in 1984 to start from scratch.
“That stripe is trademarked. That is our symbol to the consumer that it was made by our company, with quality ingredients,” De Beukelaer said.
He now runs a highly-specialized small company of between 200 and 240 employees capable of churning out north of two million cookies over a 24-hour period that are then distributed in roughly 33 countries. The office is open and quiet. There is no big cushy corner office that says “The Boss” on the door. De Beukelaer says this is to ensure efficiency of communication and ensure that he is always open to new ideas and perspectives.
‘We are a highly-specialized small company. We have a niche product that we concentrate on and we are always working to do that very well.”
A map in their open office at the plant has pins in the countries they have expanded to. Pins span the globe from China to Australia and dot the Middle East. They sell their product in South America and Africa and have heard reports of their product appearing in shops in countries they do not ship to.
They even change their packaging to accommodate different markets.
“Canada is a big market for us,” De Beukelaer said. Later on the factory floor he would inspect a new tin, with all text in french and a different hue of red, set for Canada.
De Beukelaer’s background is in machinery. He worked in the pastry industry in Europe for a time and his family’s involvement goes back further than that.
Their Gluckstadt office is adorned with old tins, some produced just after World War II ended, that have the De Beukelaer name stamped on it. They can trace their roots in the industry back to at least the 1860s.
When he wanted to make his own mark on the industry he started planning. He came up with a list of maybe 20 questions and visited 15 areas, most of which were in North America, over a period of three years. After that exhaustive search and repeatedly asking those 20 questions he decided on Madison County. A variety of things attracted him to rural Mississippi.
Head of a self-proclaimed “green family,” he has personally helped plant 20,000 new trees in his life.
The plant always works to reduce waste and recycle what they can, so they enjoyed being close to nature and found the people to nice and hospitable, but the deciding factor was consistency.
“Everywhere I was asking industrial people these twenty or so questions and was constantly getting vastly different answers from different people from year to year,” De Beukelaer said. “In Mississippi I was getting the same answers, often from the same people and that settled it. The continuity is what gave me the confidence that this was the place.”
The 100,000 square-foot factory floor has a busy hum, smells like a bakery and is spotless. Herwig De Beukelaer, the son and manager, is a wealth of knowledge. He walks fast and can rattle off statistics of most aspects of production while scooping up stray pieces of plastic wrap and card board.
Though they have some machines and parts they order off-site, they have a machine shop on the property with an engineering staff that is constantly developing new, efficient ways to make their product. Much of their machinery is proprietary and a carefully guarded industry secret.
The De Beukelaers know their machines inside and out and spend a lot of time overseeing development.
“I like to build and grow things,” Petersays. “That’s what we try to do at the plant. I done believe in authoritative decisions, we really want to push everyone from the office to the factory floor to develop their talents and that is why we are able to produce something more than just a cookie and while it elevates what you are doing to feeling, it makes an event.”
