Inside view of the corridor, which is also the picking corridor.
Pickers hard at work in the corridor.
for double-handed picking - more about which later. While the mushrooms are still growing, the shelves are positioned horizontally, so the cropping cycle proceeds in the same way as in any standard growing room. The shelves are only tilted towards the picker during harvesting. Not all the beds tilt at the same time: only beds actually being harvested at that moment move, and then return to a horizontal position imme- diately to create space for the bed above or below. One big difference though is the amount of space immediately underneath the lower bed, to allow this bed to tilt as well. The growing rooms at the farm hold four rows of shelving, five beds high, with a total growing area of 756 square metres. Another noticeable difference is the gap running lengthwise over the centre of the beds. Johan Houben and Ruud Keunen, both sales representatives at GTL Europe, explain. “We opted for a concept where picking is done in the growing room and processing and placing in trays or punnets takes place outside. There are a number of reasons. Further optimisation is possible due to sufficient space and accessibi- lity. The growing rooms can be cooked out because all sensitive technology is outside the room. This also offers benefits for hygiene. The harvest manager has the best possible insight into picker behaviour, and it is easy to supply and remove packaging material. The shelves are also easy to access for maintenance.
“Double-handed picking" Johan Houben explains how this development came about. “The owner of GTL, Jack Lemmen, was in con- tact with Districhamp in Belgium. They had been using a single layer, pull-through system for quite a while, with a system running along the bed to place the picked mushrooms on. Dutch grower Marc van Doremaele, who we sup- plied with climate units, also saw the potential of a system with a belt. After he and Jack Lem- men bounced some ideas around, they came up
with the idea of shelving that tilts towards you. Our customers, especially in industrialised countries with higher wage costs, really only want to invest in systems that facilitate dou- ble-handed picking, as this reduces costs and compensates for labour shortages. We predict that double handed picking will be the new standard, or, in fact is already." Keunen continues: “Things happened fast at Deckers. It must have been about 18 months ago that Hans, Marco and Patrick came on the advice of Ger Peeters, who managed growing for Marco at the time, to look at a prototype tilting system we had set up at the factory. That visit is what sparked the enthusiasm of the Deckers family for the system Another contributing factor was that the current manager Rob van Dieten and his previous employer were also brainstorming and making plans to use a system with a belt to convey the mushrooms." The contract to con- struct the new farm was signed in the summer of 2019, and about 20 weeks ago, (as per the end of April) building actually started on this inno-
'We are extremely pleased with the picking but some improvements are possible
downstream in the process'
Ò
Double handed picking technique on a tilted bed. MUSHROOM BUSINESS 45
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