At the end of September, the French honor, Knight of the National Order of Merit (Chevalier dans l’Ordre national du Mérite), was bestowed on Peter Poortinga.
As CEO of the Netherlands-based Plukon Food Group, the award was made to recognize Poortinga’s role in restoring Duc to profitability. As a result, many French jobs in the poultry sector were preserved, according to the citation.
Poortinga officially received the honor on behalf of the French President from Minister for Foreign Trade, Attractiveness and French Nationals Abroad, Olivier Becht, at an event in The Hague.
At the reception, Poortinga acknowledged the receipt of the award as an honor.
“When Plukon acquired uc 2017, the company was experiencing financial difficulties,” he said. “We invested a great deal, and optimized the production process. Together with the staff, we enabled Duc to become a profitable company again, and we were able to preserve many jobs as a result of this.”
More on Plukon Food Group
With annual slaughterings of 468 million birds, Plukon Food Group in among the Top five poultry meat companies in Europe, according to WATTPoultry.com’s Top Poultry Companies survey.
From its headquarters in Wezep in the Netherlands, the company supplies poultry products and ready meals to Europe’s leading retailers. According to the Plukon Food Group [https://www.plukon.com/], it operates 27 sites — 11 poultry processing facilities, and six processing and packing plants — across five European countries. With a workforce of more than 6,500, the group processes nine million chickens weekly in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, and Poland.
In 2020, Plukon acquired control of Cuparius Food Group Nijkerk (a Dutch company supplying poultry mainly to the food-service sector), Optibrut GmbH (a German hatchery), and Grupo VMR (a poultry integrator in Spain).
Two years previously, the group had purchased a controlling stake in L&B Wyrebski, a Polish poultry company.
Plukon Group announced in 2017 that it had reached agreement with Duc S.A. to acquire new shares in the French firm, as well as the shares held by Duc’s shareholders at that time.
