La Veneziana Ice Cream CC is South African biggest private owned ice cream Manufacturerer to the hospitality industry!
Since 1882
CLOSED PUBLIC HOLIDAY
LA VENEZIANA ICE CREAM CC has its origins in Europe , dating back to as early as 1882, when production took place purely by hand and was limited to only 5 liters per a day and only in one flavor…. Vanilla.
Moving from Germany to Holland in 1929 and surviving a total shutdown during the Second world War, Giovanni Belfie`s descendants settled in Heerlen, The Netherlands, where the new generation opened an ice cream factory & Branches worldwide.
More the a century after the original journey, Miguel Belfi, partnered by his wife Constance Brought these ancenral family ice cream creations here to South Africa.
Their first business premises were in the village of Magaliesburg.
In the beginning, with very little capital, deliveries went out on the back seat of the olf Alfa Romeo.
Expert repairs to the freezer equipment were expansive, and technicians were unreliable, so Miguel took a course in Refrigeration maintenance to enable him to do all the repairs himself.
At times this meant working right through the night to keep production going.
A with many new businesses it was initially a hand to mouth existence, but slowly the word spread and brought in sales.
As business expanded, a bigger factory became necessary.
The new project was two years in making, and is situated on a farm eight kilometers North of Magaliesburg.
Since then, La Veneziana has expanded to employ a workforce of approximately eighty permanent staff members.- providing sustenance to many families in an otherwise rural area with a few job prospects.
Today, the company has it`s Interjection Moulding plant , which produced the five and the two litre plastic tubs into which the ice cream is packed.
The water used in the ice cream is Magaliesburg`s very own, mountains " cradle of mankind" , underground spring water which tests have shown to be of surprising purity. Colourants are kept to the minimum and then only nature identical colours are used. For falvours the natural products are used. To get strawberry flavour, piles of strawberries are pulped, and the Rum & Raisin ice cream actually contains a lot of raisins as well as Jamaican Rum.
Dessert Portion
In addition to ice creams, sorbets, and frozen yoghurts distributed in 5 litre tubs, there are about fifty different pre portioned ice cream desserts.
There are also items made exclusively, for chains of restaurants and other ice cream manufactures.
Delivered frozen in polystyrene boxes, these items are quick to serve, minimize wastage and enable exact stock control. Yielding to customer demand a recent development has been the addition of about ten different pudding desserts.
Menus
La Veneziana products dessert menus under the clients own logo, at no charge to the restaurateur, providing at least five La Veneziana desserts appear thereon. The company also produces, at no charge to dessert menu customers, table talker stands of the dessert menus.
La Veneziana Goes Green
In 2011, promoted by spiraling energy costs, Miguel Belfi started looking at alternative options for fuelling his fleet of delivery vans.
As La Veneziana products it`s ice cream exclusively for the hospitality industry, the logical way to go was to manufacture bio diesel from used cooking oil- exchanging ice cream for oil with customers.
To this end, Miguel did the necessary research, and managed to produce his first batch of bio diesel in the letter part of 2011.
Never one to cut corners, Miguel sent a sample of each new batch of bio diesel for testing, by experts in the field.
By the end 2011 he succeeded in producing bio diesel that meet with SABS standarts.
Today he powers all the factory generators, hot water boilers and his own fleet of delivery vans exclusively with his own bio diesel, and to this end has now employed an artisan whose sole purpose is to manufacture the fuel according to Miguel`s stringent standards.
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