The story
The history of Avebe is strongly connected with the history of the Dutch province Groningen, the many privately owned starch manufacturers in the area and the former starch company KSH (Royal Scholten-Honig) founded by Willem Albert Scholten in 1841, the first Dutch multinational.
The name Avebe is derived from the Dutch words Aardappelmeel Verkoop Bureau (Potato Flour Sales Office). The cooperative was founded in 1919 as a cooperative partnership between different potato starch manufacturers located in Groningen owned by potato farmers to ensure good market prices for their native starch. The farmer cooperatives successfully pushed the privately owned starch companies away from native starch into the production of starch derivatives. In 1948, the cooperation evolved into one company and was renamed as Avebe. In 1956, the first derivatives were produced. In 1978, after the bankruptcy of KSH, further integration of the potato starch industry in Groningen was finalized as Avebe took over a large part of the Scholten company. KSH was the last privately owned potato starch company in the Netherlands.
Today, Avebe is now the largest producer of potato starch and potato starch derivatives worldwide.
From Wikipedia’s article on Royal Avebe, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5