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 day as the son of a food technologist and sweet caring mother. Food always played an enjoyable part in his life.
1979
The 12th of February 1979 in Warschaw, Pawel Jurga joined the world. As a son of a movie director and journalist he always had a sincere interest for interaction with people.
1995
Dirk graduated as Master of Food Science at the Agricultural University of Wageningen, The Netherlands and started his career in the Dutch food ingredient industry. At Kievit BV he worked as a Commercial Manager and Director R&D with pleasure. Kievit BV is an unique spray-drying company in The Netherlands and operates worldwide.
2003
Pawel graduated with a Master Degree Economy and Film Production, at the University of Lodz, Poland. He started his career in the Polish movie and television industry. After he made some award winning documentary movies it happened to be he started working in the food ingredient business. There he represented European producers, including Kievit BV, for the Polish market.
2005
Lefka O’life was established when the family Balfoort went to Greece in 2006. In the one year they were there Dirk started to do exploratory research and tried to valorise the waste stream of olive oil processing. That was more challenging than expected, but it brought some essential experience.
2007
After his return to The Netherlands, Dirk started to help several spray drying companies with new business development of functional food ingredients. On project and interim management basis.
2010
The greatest moment in the history of 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. That's what we call 'serendipity'. Pawel and Dirk each have their specific roles, characters and competences. As a team they changed companies with their spirit, new ideas, energy and great business. From then onwards they assisted more spray-drying companies with new business development. From The Netherlands to Poland and Germany.
2015
After a call from Malaysia, Dirk took the challenge to jump on a plane and met with the owners and management of Custom Food Group. A couple of days later the first corporation started. Till now on this has evolved in an everlasting partnership. Together we work on strategy, research and international business development. Because of that Custom Food Group organically grew to one of the leading companies of micro-encapsulated nutritional fats and oils.
2017
Lefka O’life started helping out a few other nice 'family' companies. We travelled all over the world, visited a wide variety of food companies and created opportunities to also help others to market their unique products in places all across the world.
2024
The all new Lefka O’life website. What a challenge. It was a good time to sit down, analyse our values, strengths and competences. But above all our philosophy of life: making others happy, connecting and enjoying work to the fullest.
