Volys Star

VOLYS STAR – A TRADITION OF INNOVATION

Starting back in 1946 as a small chicken slaughterhouse, Volys Star is one of the poultry industry’s pioneers in Europe. We commit ourselves to produce products with the highest added value and of the finest quality.

In the 1970’s, Volys Star realised its first major innovation by developing cooked products from poultry meat which until then had only been made from pork meat. As a true believer in this new industry, Volys Star converted from a chicken slaughterhouse into a poultry meat processor and started growing and slaughtering turkeys instead of chickens – turkeys carried more meat than the ‘skinny’ chickens at that time.

Although Volys Star may have changed its business from slaughtering to poultry meat processing, we have never changed our values, i.e. offering pure, high quality, value added convenience poultry products. Many of our products, be it cold cuts, breaded products or meal components, got rewarded and are unique of their kind.

As Volys Star is a poultry-only meat processor (quite unique in a pork-dominated industry) we very early on attracted the interest of the European Muslim Community, one of their major concerns being whether our products are Halal or not ? At that time our products were not.

However, after some hesitation – Volys Star only promises what it can deliver – we decided to give it a try – after all, not having pork nor using pork ingredients in our plant already gave us an advantage.

We did slaughter animals at low speed in order to maximise meat quality, so we could change the slaughtering method from mechanical slaughter to manual slaughter. And we did have many Muslims working in our plant, so no problem to establish a team of qualified and certified Muslim slaughtermen to perform ritual slaughtering.

Volys Star also focuses on having simple, pure product formulations – after all, the finest products are usually the purest ones. Hence, we could keep most of our recipes – in most of the cases our recipes were already Halal without ourselves knowing it.

The same is true for our turkey growing.

Our turkeys are all green-fed. We do not use growth promoters, nor antibiotics, nor animal proteins or animal fat. Our turkeys are raised (and slaughtered) with respect for Animal Welfare. All typical Halal requirements. We are one of the few European producers with Salmonella-free flocks – no better indication that we are raising very healthy animals.

So, maybe it is no surprise that Volys Star has become market leader in no time of the Halal Premium Quality product segment.
Since then we have come a long way.

We have further refined our Halal knowledge and built it into our products. We discovered we could work “dedicated Halal” and at the same time still retain product quality and convenience for the non-Halal market as well.

We take part in various Halal Seminars and actively participate in the IHI Alliance in order to establish International Halal Standards. We are gradually expanding our Halal Branded product sales from Europe to the Middle East and Asia. We invest in technology to prolong our products’ shelf-life without compromising on quality and taste sensation.

We are a producer of Premium Poultry Products only. We do not expand our business into other product ranges as we wish to retain control on the complete production process – we do not want to outsource production to non-dedicated Halal plants.

Currently we sell our Halal branded product range in Belgium, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Guadeloupe, Martinique, India and Malaysia.

Our products can be found in various supermarkets such as Carrefour, Bou Khalil, Spinneys, Géant, Hyper-Panda etc. Among our customers one can find Emirates Flight Catering, Emarat Petrol Station, Bakeria, Qatar Airways, Domino’s and Quick France.

As Mr. Hani Mansour M. Al-Mazeedi of the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research once told us that “a Muslim (consumer) likes to be told by a Muslim (inspector) that a product is Halal”, we are also working closely together with a number of certifying organisations such as :
-       Mosque of Paris – France
-       Mosque of Aachen – Germany
-       Halal Food Authority – U.K.
-       IFCE (International Food Council Europe) – Belgium
and now, we are approved by JAKIM for exports to Malaysia.

But most of all we favour transparency and always welcome our customers to see for themselves how we work.