Kaak Brand Guidelines: An 1846 Coppersmith, a Terborg Tin Works and Royal Status

A coppersmith, a tin works and a change of name.

Kaak’s story starts under another family’s name and in another town. Dutch Wikipedia traces the company to 1846, when Johannes Hendricus Weenink set up as an independent coppersmith in Lichtenvoorde, in the Achterhoek region of the eastern Netherlands. His son Jan continued the business in Terborg from 1859. Food Business Middle East & Africa reported in July 2021 that the company was founded in 1846 as a producer of product carriers, so the two accounts of its first trade differ. The company itself says it has been gaining knowledge of bakery technology “since 1846.”

The Kaak name arrived 35 years after that start. Bernardina Antoinetta Weenink-Lubbers took over the business in 1878, and Bernard Kaak began working there on 1 June 1880, Dutch Wikipedia says; from 1881 it traded as Firma B. Kaak. The next generation, Bernard’s sons Jan and Willem, came in during 1902 and 1903. A new Terborg workshop of 1904 made household metalware, among other goods, and in 1915 the brothers took the business over and added tin products. A second Terborg building, bought in 1927, was fitted out for milk cans and baking sheets, which Dutch Wikipedia calls an indirect forerunner of the later bakery work.

In 1936 the brothers divided the business. Jan became owner of the Terborgsche Blikfabriek, a tin factory, while Willem kept the original workshop and shop under the Firma B. Kaak name. Jan’s son Stef Kaak joined the tin factory in 1937 and became its director in 1953. The shop closed in 1957, and Dutch Wikipedia dates the decisive change to the 1960s, when craft bakeries moved in large numbers to mechanised production. The company shifted its weight to supplying them, first with baking tins and conveying systems, then with automated lines. In the 1970s it traded as S.W. Kaak Metaalwarenfabriek, after Stef’s initials.

From tins to whole lines.

In the early 1990s, Dutch Wikipedia says, the business widened into designing and fitting out complete bakeries, a scope it summed up as “van silo tot krat,” from silo to crate. The fourth generation arrived in 1994 with Jan Kaak.

Dutch Wikipedia says growth then came through a series of purchases. Among them was Benier, a name British Baker says is best known for dividers and moulders; the magazine reported in June 2017 that Benier’s UK business joined the group in 1991. In July 2015 it reported that Benier UK had bought the tin cleaning and coating division of Aktrion Foods, creating Kaak Bakeware (UK) at Dudley in the West Midlands. Dutch Wikipedia lists the acquired names as Benier, Daub, DrieM, MCS, Lhotellier and Buro Techniek 2000. An undated FoodChain Magazine profile describes Daub as a maker of thermal oil ovens and stone-baking technology, and Lhotellier R2A as a French developer of non-stick coatings.

A later addition was Silowacht, a silo storage and process specialist. Food Business Middle East & Africa called it a newcomer in July 2021, and the company says it joined that year. It now operates as Kaak Silos & Dosing in Zwolle, where the company says a new building is expected to be finished by mid-March 2027.

Today’s range runs across mixing, dough make-up, proofing, decorating, baking, cooling, freezing and handling, as the company lists it, and bakeware remains part of it. Its DrieM sheeting lines handle bread and pizza doughs, and the company says more than 50 are running worldwide. Its ovens include indirect-fired, thermo-oil and direct-fired types, a Kaak sales manager told Food Business Middle East & Africa in March 2022. A software layer, iBakeCare, collects data from machines and lines; the company says generative AI now helps users read that data. In a July 2025 interview with BBM Magazine, chief executive Lodewijk van der Borg named rolls and buns as a priority, built around a newly developed bun divider, along with a bigger presence in Turkey.

Outside bakery work, Dutch Wikipedia says the group’s 3D metal printing activity became a separate subsidiary, K3D, in 2018. Food Business Middle East & Africa reported in 2021 that K3D and the technical intermediary JAWS would keep their own names.

Design and documentation.

Bakery equipment makers sell machines, but what they show is mostly dough. The picture language of the trade is familiar: dough sheets gliding along white belts, laminated croissant lines, rack ovens opening on golden trays, deck ovens with stone soles, and flour-dusted hands beside stainless machines.

The test bakery is part of that presentation. Rademaker invites customers to its Technology Centre in Culemborg to try their products with its technologists and test bakers, and it runs an Experience Centre near Chicago; Sveba Dahlen says its Bakery Innovation Centers let distributors and customers test its machines using their own recipes and ingredients, with master bakers on hand. In both cases the offer is to see a recipe run on the machine.

The calendar runs on trade fairs, and that is where the machines are seen working. iba, held in Düsseldorf in 2025, returns to Munich from 24 to 28 October 2027, its organiser says. At the 2025 show, World Bakers reported, a Glimek bread line was to be demonstrated live with dough several times a day. Sigep World meets in Rimini in January 2027, IBIE in Las Vegas in September 2028, and südback at Messe Stuttgart. Sirha Bake & Snack, where the old Europain web address now leads, is next in Paris in January 2028.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker: who founded it, who owns it, and where it says its machines are made. Company statements are given as company statements. Where a maker publishes no brand colours or typefaces, the palette and type here are our own interpretation.

Many brands folded into one in 2021.

The biggest identity decision in the company’s recent history came in its anniversary year. On 24 June 2021, marking 175 years, the group bundled all its specialisations under one brand name, Kaak, Bakers Journal reported. The Benier name had already begun to give way in Britain: British Baker reported in 2017 that Benier UK had become Kaak Group United Kingdom, to show that the office sold equipment from all group companies. The 2021 statement carried the line “You bake, we care.”

The title followed four months later. On 29 October 2021 a member of Gelderland’s provincial executive visited and authorised the company to call itself “Royal Kaak,” Bakers Journal reported. The predicate, granted by King Willem-Alexander, goes to companies with an important position in their field and national importance that have existed for more than 100 years, and it runs for 25 years with the option of renewal. Dutch Wikipedia says a new house style came with it. Van der Borg told BBM Magazine that the title gave the company a chance to rename its brands under one name.

The family connection remains part of the description. Bakers Journal called Kaak family-owned in 2021, and the company’s own website calls it “a genuine family business,” with its head office still in Terborg. Dutch Wikipedia says the site also houses a Kaak Museum on the company’s history, and it gives about 1,000 staff in 2026.

The company lists its operating companies at Terborg, for bakeware and food processing systems; Nieuwkuijk, for dough technology; Ala in Italy, for ovens and proofers; Contres in France, for coating; Zwolle; and Gqeberha in South Africa. Its careers site says development, engineering and production are managed in-house, and it reported showing a pre-proofer made in Brazil at the FIPAN show in São Paulo in July 2026. Customers can test their own dough at the Kaak Technology Center, which Dutch Wikipedia places at Nieuwkuijk.

The slogan itself has changed. A 2017 engineering society notice in the Netherlands used “from silo to krat,” and the 2021 trade coverage said “crate”; the website now says “from silo to truck.” The homepage code uses a near-black with an amber; neither is published as an official brand colour. The company has also set a public ambition, under the heading Food without Footprint, of an integrated line for CO2-neutral bread by 2030.

For a design guide, Kaak shows how a company built from purchases can fold its names into one, then add a royal title to the result. Compare Rademaker, another Dutch maker of bakery lines, and WP Bakery Group. For this guide we use a near-black and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Kaak’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.