At 20 hectares, Dutch Berries’ strawberry greenhouse was already the largest in the Netherlands when it opened in 2018, and 2 years later the company expanded by another 4 hectares. For its part, the nursery is equipped with 14 hectares of LED lighting to be able to supply strawberries all year round.
Boudewijn van der Wal and his son Job. Photos by www.at10.nl
Around the World “Just one more bowl. Or two.” During Kom in de Kas, the open days of Dutch horticulture, sliced strawberries from the Dutch Berries greenhouses in Zuilichem, Gelderland, are in great demand. In addition, the consumer usually knows the way to the nursery, judging by the large agricultural machinery in front of the company. However, Dutch Berries strawberries go much further. Through Veiling Zaltbommel, they go to supermarkets in the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Belgium and England, and the upper segment can even be found in Japan. This is not surprising, given that the company harvests approximately 200,000,000 of them each year, the equivalent of more than 3 million kilos of strawberries. In Nieuwaal, Kreling Aardbeien, part of the private family company GK Group like Dutch Berries, has a further 7.5 hectares of strawberry cultivation. In total, the group has almost 50 hectares of greenhouses.
Growing sector Partly due to projects like this, greenhouse strawberry cultivation has grown strongly in the Netherlands in recent years. Commercial Director Boudewijn van der Wal, who together with Gijbert Kreling manages Dutch Berries, has spoken before about this growth and the desire of retailers to have Dutch strawberries all year round. To meet this demand, the company has expanded the nursery with another 4 hectares in recent years and has opted for LED lighting. Signify lights were first hung on 4 hectares, and then Mechatronix’s lighting solution was chosen for another 10 hectares so that they could harvest from a total of 14 hectares throughout the year. With 3 cogenerators of 8.6 MW, the lights are supplied with energy, and a blackout screen completes the story.
Sustainability These are important developments today because the costs of growing strawberries are also rising sharply. The company controls energy costs with contracts agreed in advance, with LED lighting and solar panels: with 1,350 of them, they supply energy for their own cooling. But there are more costs that are rising sharply these years: fertilizers and the cost of substrates, for example. Currently, the company works with coco and peat that is reused after cultivation, but it is investigating whether similar results can be achieved with coco that can be used for several years. Thanks to the large-scale mixing facility for fertilizers, which is fully automated, they also keep a close eye on this: the automatic filling of containers for liquid fertilizers and the 2 buffer tanks (5.5 million liters of water!) fertilization . The 5.5 million liter buffer tank is used to buffer the heat from the CHPs and use it for cultivation at the right time.
Workforce The workforce is another point of attention for the company, which employs 240 people in high season. In addition to the international workforce, for which Dutch Berries has several homes of its own, many workers also come from the region. “Especially in the soft fruit industry, the quality of the employees is very important. Strawberries are of course a fragile product, so we pay a lot of attention to it,” says Boudewijn. Various automation solutions have also been implemented in the greenhouse to keep a close eye on the workforce. Thanks to lighting, the demand for labor can also be spread more evenly throughout the year.
Since last year, there has been another special worker at the company: Job van der Wal, Boudewijn’s son. He has been working as a junior crop manager at the company for over a year, a role he is already familiar with from previous internships and working during new construction. At the moment, he is fully responsible for the cultivation at Dutch Berries.
For more information: Boudewijn van der WalDutch Berriesinfo@dutch-berries.comwww.dutch-berries.com
