The Duravant family of operating companies serve the food processing, packaging and material handling segments.
MARELEC Food Technologies a leading manufacturer of intelligent portioning and customized weighing and grading solutions headquartered in Nieuwpoort, Belgium who is now acquired by Duravant, a global engineered equipment and automation solutions provider to the food processing, packaging and material handling sectors. MARELEC serves the poultry, meat, seafood and marine sectors, designing and manufacturing innovative turnkey systems that ensure high-quality output and maximum yield for food processors around the world.
Recognized globally as a high-tech solutions provider for secondary processing solutions, MARELEC has been serving multi-national customers for over 40 years. Their team of engineers and food processing experts are driven by a customer-oriented design philosophy. Using innovative technologies, such as portioning software with intelligent cutting algorithms, their systems are built for high speed and precise performance, helping operators maximize yields and quality.
MARELEC’s expansive capabilities are showcased at their manufacturing hub in Belgium which houses their R&D center and cooled demo room. MARELEC has sales and service centers throughout Europe, the United States and Asia, along with a powerhouse network of distributors across six continents and in over 50 countries.
Our products are developed and manufactured by a team of enthusiastic engineers and designers. When a MARELEC customer requires advice, quick delivery, or the best possible local after-sales support, our network of international distributors is accessible.
We deliver our systems all over the globe and pay close attention to our customers’ specific needs.
In 2018, we doubled the space of our production facility in Nieuwpoort, where everything started, to 6500 m² in order to cope with growing worldwide sales and demands for MARELEC weighing and portioning solutions. We expanded our R&D offices and we built a fully equipped and cooled demo room to welcome potential customers. This is a unique way to prove the performance of our equipment.
In 2007, a salmon processing firm in Chile challenged MARELEC to develop a portioning machine. The goal was to cut salmon into fixed-weight portions, irrespective of the shape of the salmon. This technology makes it possible to maximize the efficiency of the primary materials, while increasing yield and reducing loss. In 2008, the first portioning machine was launched The MARELEC PORTIO had become a reality. It soon became clear to us that it was not only fish that needed to be portioned. We developed the necessary adaptations and options for portioning meat and poultry at an accelerated pace and these markets formed the basis for the rapid growth of MARELEC.
Since we had the technology for weighing on board of ships using motion-compensated scales, it was a logical step to develop sorting systems for use on board. This solution created small factories on board of ships, where fish is sorted by weight, even before the ship has landed onshore. It gave considerable competitive advantages over the other ships that still needed to sort everything onshore. A MARELEC sorting machine on board quickly became a "must have". The weighing and grading technology was soon introduced to other industries on land. MARELEC successfully enters the poultry and meat processing industry. Flexible, reliable, precise and tailor-made solutions, considering the specific demands of every customer soon became a trade-mark for MARELEC.
In 1991, MARELEC designed the ultimate weighing system for use at sea: the motion-compensated marine scale. The technology in the marine scale compensates for a ship's motion to provide accurate measurements. Weighing under the worst conditions at sea has become a reality.
It all started at sea. MARELEC's first activities involved manufacturing traction control systems for use on board fishing vessels. A MARELEC trawl control system measures the forces in the cables and controls the winches when a net becomes stuck in order to prevent the ship from capsizing. The benefits of this innovative development were soon appreciated by fishermen because of increased safety and higher efficiency. Fishing vessels are still equipped with these unique systems today. MARELEC stands for "MARine” and “ELECtronics”.
