If you have ever craved for tocino or longganisa in Europe, chances are you have a stock of Nida’s Philippine frozen products.
What started as a home business with two well-loved Pampanga delicacies has grown into a production of 24 different products distributed in more than 20 countries in Europe. But Nida Olthof-Sicat, the person behind the products, has remained low-key.
Nida Olthof-Sicat shies away from self-aggrandizement. During our interview at a hotel in Dordrecht, her home city for the last 40 years, she hesitates using the word success to define her, always passing her achievements as blessings from the Lord.
Nida is after all a woman of faith, a staunch member of Iglesia ni Cristo. After her husband, Jelle Olthof, converted into her religion – an answered prayer as she puts it- she has dedicated most of her life to her duties to the church. While her husband worked, she busied herself with their house, children and church. They lived a comfortable life, thanks to Jelle’s job at the biggest dredging company in the world. But the Olthofs maintained a simple lifestyle.
The need to help is the driving force behind Nida Philippine products, a lesson she learned early from her father, who would even share the family’s meal to church members who needed food.
Blessed with a good life in the Netherlands, Nida felt a strong responsibility to share her blessings by helping family and relatives back home.
“I never dreamed of becoming rich. I didn’t even need to work because we were doing well. But from the money I was earning from my home business, I could help whoever I wanted to help.”
Nida Olthof-Sicat, owner of Nida Philippines
When her two children were older, she started making small batches of home-made tocino ang longganisa to earn her own money. As a Kapampangan, these were the recipes people expected from her, knowing that she could make them from the heart.
“I never dreamed of becoming rich. I didn’t even need to work because we were doing well. But from the money I was earning from my home business, I could help whoever I wanted to help.”
Starting in her kitchen
She did not have a definite capital, as the ingredients she used when starting were mostly bought together with the grocery budget. Nor had she any business acumen. But kababayans loved her products and she started getting more orders.
When retailers became interested in selling her products in stores, her husband advised her to register her home business at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce. She decided to scale up but not before doing her homework.
Armed with her strong faith and determination, she and her husband started calling up meat processing companies in the Netherlands and brought her tocino and longganisa for taste tests. They dove into the legal requirements of the food business, and researched the ins and outs of producing and distributing her own brand of Filipino frozen meat products.
They finally found their first partner with Bartens Slagerij, a company specializing in meat processing.
“We asked them if they would accept my own recipe and they agreed to try it. Thinking that I would get to meet only the chef. But to my surprise, two people in white overalls came together with the chef. They first shared a piece of the chicken longganisa. After the first bite, they looked at each other and their eyes widened. They could not believe that the combination of sugar, garlic and other spices could be that delicious,” Nida recalls amusingly.
Unknown to them, the two men in white overalls were keurmeesters, Dutch meat inspectors who decide if the products meet the quality required to sell to consumers. When they got home, the chef called to tell them that the inspectors loved their recipe, and they had not tasted anything like that before.
So in August 2017, the brand Nida Philippine Products was born. Nida was 57 years old and Jelle was already retired but their ripe age did not prevent them from building one of the most well-known brands of Filipino meat products in Europe.
“It might be a strange thing to say but I don’t have a competitive mentality. I know the quality of my products. If others are producing the same kind of products as I do, that’s okay. I always respect my competitors. I want us both to be successful.”
Nida Olthof-Sicat, owner of Nida Philippines
Committed to high quality
When they were ready to expand to more products, Nida bought a sample of a well- loved Filipino brand of hotdogs for tasting, hoping that she could reproduce it in the Netherlands. Since meat products from the Philippines are banned in Europe, she wanted to bring the same taste for Filipinos who are craving for it.
The sample hotdog contained mechanically separated meat or MSM. Also called pink slime due to its paste-like consistency, Mechanically separated meat is extracted from beef, pig and chicken carcasses once all the usable flesh has been cut off.
The meat is separated from the carcass using high pressure equipment and heated, resulting in a ‘meat soup’, a process which can promote bacterial growth. MSM are used as meat-fillers for products like hotdogs.
In 2022, food watchdog Food Watch took the Dutch government to court alleging that Nederlandse Voedsel- en-Warenautoriteit (NVWA), or the The Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, could not guarantee the traceability of MSM. A three year investigation revealed the NWA rarely checks the safety of MSM, which according to Food Watch could pose a risk to consumers due to high bacterial growth. However, EFSA concluded that possible microbiological risks associated with mechanically separated meat are similar to those related to non-mechanically separated meat.
But wanting to ensure that the taste and quality of their meat products adhere to the highest standards, Nida was able to replicate the taste of the Filipino red hotdogs without MSM, by using her own recipe, acceptable to the Dutch Food Authority and adhering to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
Scaling up
In 2019, Nida Philippine Products began a new partnership with Ardon, a small meat-producing company in Etten-Leur. Adding more products into their assortment included Filipino chicken and pork hotdogs, holiday ham, Cebu de chorizo, and beef tapa, the two companies grew bigger together.
“Ardon is really committed to sourcing the best quality meat in Europe, restaurant quality, that’s their secret. It is with them that we really grew bigger. They were very accommodating when I first presented our products. They expanded an area behind their facility to make space for the production of our products. And they have invested in new machineries to accommodate the growing demand for Nida Philippine Products. I consider them as family.”
Together with Ardon, Nida Philippine Products has grown into 24 products that now includes bopis, sisig, chicharon, crispy pata and meatloaf. Their latest assortment, Filipino corned beef, uses 96% beef, a testament to their commitment to quality and great taste.
A strong team
Nida believes that her success will not be possible if they don’t have a strong team and great cooperation with the people she works with. Her production partner Ardon has always been willing to produce new products with the highest quality, even products that they are not always familiar with, like bopis or sisig. Her European distribution was made possible by Beagley Copperman, one of the biggest distributors of Asian products in Europe. Thanks to Rhea Topacio, who handles the marketing and design of Nida Philippine Products, she can focus on creating, testing and producing new products. Behind her is a community of Filipinos in the Netherlands, who help her achieve the authentic and traditional taste of Pinoy regional products.
Blessed beyond imagination
From making home-made products at her kitchen to earn extra, Nida produces a considerable quantity of her products regularly, even pallets containing about 800 kilos of meat are leaving Ardon’s facilities. Their clients range from European distributors, Asian and Filipino stores and even ship handling companies sourcing foods for the Filipino crew. The company now earns a reasonable turnover.
Nida, who has always credited her success to the working of the Lord, sometimes cannot believe what she was able to achieve.
“This has been beyond my imagination. I had a chance to have a different, more affluent life, but I decided to forgo all of them to keep my promise of service. I think this is the Lord’s way of saying, in the latter part of your life, you deserve this. I was able to help most of my family, help some to start a business, and send some of their children to school. These all happened because of longganisa.”
Her view towards success allows Nida to easily shrug off negative experiences from competitors, and even encourage Filipino consumers to try out the products of her competitors. She values honesty above all.
“It might be a strange thing to say but I don’t have a competitive mentality. I know the quality of my products. If others are producing the same kind of products as I do, that’s okay. I always respect my competitors. I want us both to be successful.”
Nida is now a few years shy of the official Dutch pension age. Her husband has stretched his retirement age to help her grow the business she fully loved. But she is not planning on slowing down.
“This has been beyond my imagination. I had a chance to have a different, more affluent life, but I decided to forgo all of them to keep my promise of service. I think this is the Lord’s way of saying, in the latter part of your life, you deserve this. I was able to help most of my family, help some to start a business, and send some of their children to school. These all happened because of longganisa.”
Nida Olthof-Sicat, owner of Nida Philippines
Her production partner, Slagerij Ardon, believes in their products so much that they have invested in expensive canning machines to take Nida Philippine Products to the next level. She still continuously receives inquiries, not just from Europe but all the way from the Middle East. Like the Nida who cooked in her kitchen to earn extra to help her family, she is continuing her entrepreneurial journey to keep on helping, this time her resellers and the new entrepreneurs that count on her.
The dilemma of continuity that most SME’s struggles with remains a question yet to be answered. But Nida knows that the Lord will guide her to the right decision. She is hoping that her children will continue the work that they have started.
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