Comigel S.A.S [1] is a privatly owned French food processing company, head quartered in Metz.
Founded in 1972 in Luxembourg, it moved its headquarters to Metz in 1976. The company was owned by Perkins Foods Holdings Ltd of the United Kingdom from 1991, and then purchased by French-based private equity firm Céréa Capital in 2007.
After the purchase of Atlantique Alimentaire 2010, group turnover reached 100 million euro, on production of 30,000 tons of food.[2]
Comigel produces mainly frozen ready-to-eat food for the European market, and is a white label provider to different food and retaillers brands of frozen fast food and desserts.
At the Tavola factory in Capellen, Luxembourg, 200 employees produce 16,000 tonnes annually of frozen ready-meals. These are then sold to retaillers including Auchan and Cora in Frace, while a third are exported to customers including Findus, and Tesco in the UK. One quarter of the factory's output goes to restaurants in schools, colleges, hospitals, retirement homes, company canteens and public service restaurants.[3]
In February 2013 it was reported that a lasagne product that Comigel [4], with suppliers, produces in Luxembourg on behalf of Findus for distribution in Great Britain and Sweden e.g., was found to contain up to 100% horse meat instead of the 100% beef as declared in the list of ingredients in 11 out of 18 samples in an FSA check.[5]
Comigel now claim that the horse meat supplier was by Spanghero[6] a firm now owned by Lur Berri[7].
Findus announced that they will accept no more meat from Comigel and stopped further deliveries of the product in question. On the 8th of February 2013, Findus Sweden announced a recall of its 375gr packs of ready made Lasagna (code 63957) and published a contact number for customers who wanted to return the products they had already purchased.[8]
The supermarket chain Aldi announced on 8th Feb 2013 that it would be withdrawing Today's Special Frozen Beef Lasagne and Today's Special Frozen Spaghetti Bolognese after tests found the meat content to contain between 30-100% horse meat.