How it all started.

Sure you want to get into this? It's quite a lot. From Dirk and Pawel their journeys in the old Volvo to yet another trip to Asia. We've been through a lot, but hell yeah, it was worth it all. Get on!

Innovaters

We've been on the road for quite some while. Scroll to our journey.

1968

June the 26th in Voerendaal, Dirk saw the light of the life, a son of a food technologist and a sweet caring mother. Food always being an enjoyable part of life.

1979

The 12th of February 1979 in Warschaw, Pawel Jurga joined the world. A son of a Movie Director and a sweet caring mother a journalist. Sincere interest in socializing with people has always been central in Pawel his life.

1995

Dirk graduated as Master of Food Science at the Agricultural University of Wageningen, The Netherlands, starting his career in the Dutch Food ingredient Industry. From Commercial Manager to Director R&D he worked with pleasure at Kievit BV. A unique spray-drying company in The Netherlands, active globally.

2003

Pawel graduated with a Master Degree Economy and Film Production, at the University of Lodz, Poland, starting his career in the Polish Movie and Television Industry. After having made some award winning documentary movies, by some coincidence he started working in the food ingredient business, representing European producers for the Polish market, among which Kievit.

2005

Lefka O’life BV was established when the family Balfoort went to live in 2006 for a year in Greece. Dirk started to do exploratory research trying to valorise the waste stream of olive oil processing. To be honest, it was a bit more challenging than expected but a life experience.

2007

After returning to The Netherlands, Dirk started to help several spray drying companies with new business development of functional food ingredients on project as well as on interim management basis.

2010

The greatest moment for Lefka O’life. Pawel and Dirk met again. Both in a challenging career change momentum, so to say, coincidently they met each other on the stairways of the Food Ingredient Exhibition in London. The decided to drink a beer and talk. And so, it happened, the first mutual project was born. Serendipity. Pawel and Dirk each having their specific roles, characters and competences, as a team they changed companies, their spirit, bringing new ideas, energy and of course business. From then onwards they helped out more spray-drying companies with new business development, from The Netherlands to Poland and Germany; new business development and turn-arounds.

2015

After a call from Malaysia, Dirk took the challenge to jump on a plane and meet with the owners and management of Custom Food Group. A couple of days later the first cooperation started. And till now this has evolved in an everlasting partnership. Helping in strategy, research and international business development Custom Food Group grew organically to one of the leading companies of micro-encapsulated nutritional fats and oils the past years.

2017

Lefka O’life started helping out a few other nice “family” companies. Whilst we travel all over the world and visited a wide variety of food companies creating the opportunity to also help others to market their unique products in places all across the world.

2019

Eric van Rijn, a business friend from Dirk, joint the venture. Eric, having a lot of experience in the international trade of food ingredients (and speaking Spanish as well), helped both Custom Food Group as Lefka O’life with further business growth in particular in Latin-America.

2022

The making of the new Lefka O’life website. What a challenge. A good time to sit down, analyse our values, strengths and competences. But above all our philosophy of life: connecting people, making others happy and enjoying work to the fullest.