PACKAGING FOR FRESHNESS
Solmas Food plant manager Yort Gedikoglu (left) joins company president and director of sales Mehmet Solmaz inside the facility’s on-site retail store.
THE MEAT OF THE MATTER High-performance thermoform packaging machinery enabling hard-working ethnic foods processor to keep up with its growing production volumes By Andrew Snook Photos by Naomi Hiltz
CANADIANPACKAGING.COM
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olmaz Food knows what it takes to make quality meat products. The company’s origin stems from humble beginnings when its founder, Tahsin Solmaz, decided to become a butcher working in downtown Ankara,Turkey, in 1965. After 15 years in the trade, Tahsin Solmaz decided to open his own butcher shop in Istanbul. After finishing high school, Mehmet Solmaz followed in his father’s footsteps and learned the trade while working alongside his dad, operating two high-traffic butcher shops in downtown Istanbul. During this time, Mehmet’s passion for producing prepared meat products flourished. In 2001, the Solmaz family decided to
immigrate to Canada, where Tahsin opened a new butcher shop on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. Shortly after, Mehmet created a small wholesale meat business to supply local restaurants, astutely identifying a promising opportunity to fill a void in the market for quality halal meat products. Before long, he and his father began preparing a variety of tasty halal products including chicken, beef doner, shawarma and kebabs—ultimately starting up their own processing facility in Mississauga, Ont., in 2007. Five years later, Tahsin’s young son, Faik, and his son-in-law, Yurt Gedikoglu, joined the family business—producing traditional Turkish sausage, sujuk and pastirma, as well as doner for restaurants requiring halal-approved ingredients. The company quickly made its name March 2022 · CANADIANPACKAGING
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