CASING SOIL
At the front of the hall, peat is loaded into an enormous machine which sieves and mixes the material.
Gerard Swinkels, Product Control Manager at Topterra: ‘The most important ingredient is instinctive gut-feeling ’.
sations, the Water and Soil Association and the rural district administration.
The formation of peat
At the edge of the peat bog being harvested, a digger levels off the steep edges. The peat is carried by train to the transloading station where it is loaded into trailers for transport to HWW. The excavations reveal just how peat was formed 8000 to 12,000 years ago. This process started when the glaciers started retreating at the end of the ice age. Meltwater accumulated and formed lakes on the impenetrable loamy soil. The excavated land in Teufelsmoor is also covered by a layer of water. Sphagnum moss is starting to grow in this water, mirroring the process of vegetation growth when peat was formed . However, before the landscape has been restored to its former state, many thousands of years must pass.
Gerard Swinkels, Product Control Manager at Topterra explains that the upper layer is unsuitable for use because the roots and other organic matter it contains affect the purity of
32 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
the peat. “The lower layer is also unusable as it is mixed with the loam the peat was formed on”, says Swinkels, who constantly monitors the digging activities, so that only the right quality is removed. All the peat processed by HWW is regularly sampled and analysed thoroughly, but visual inspection also provides a lot of informa- tion. “Hygiene is very important”, continues Swinkels. “All the potential threats for mush- rooms that the peat may contain are invisible. We make every possible effort to exclude these risks. Because, if the peat contains any harmful organisms, infection can rapidly spread to the mushrooms. To maintain our high hygiene standards, we inspect the peat at an early stage - before it is extracted.”
Multiple sources As well as peat removed from Teufelsmoor and peat delivered by regular suppliers, HWW also uses raw material extracted from construction sites in the region – for example when wind turbines are installed. “We also closely monitor the quality of this material. Nothing comes on site without prior testing.” Another measure Topterra imposes to maintain high hygiene standards is the use of its own fleet of vehicles. “You can never be certain what other trailers have carried.” The company also prefers to work with its own team who are all familiar with how vital hygiene is and the processing facility is meticulously disinfected from top to bottom twice a year. “We remove all the fixtures and spray everything. All these measures mean we can guarantee the supply of a top quality product 52 weeks a year”, according to Swinkels. As well as seeing the peat extraction site, guests could also visit the new processing facility at the HWW premises. This was completed last year
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