Ruud Keunen (l) and Johan Houben van GTL. Production is
now just as good as on a
‘regular’ farm.
transparent sheet, so the climate in the room is not disturbed. The mushrooms exit on the belt for further processing outside the room. The key word here is optimal picking practice, and in Germany we all have the same expenses for energy, compost and investments. But in the meanwhile, wage costs account for 40-45% of the total, and consequently everyone is sear- ching for ways to boost efficiency. We have to save on labour costs, also because it is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable staff. Ulti- mately, we chose GTL Europe because of their system, its simplicity and the good personal contact. The way they engineer their systems and approach to project implementation also appealed to us."
Marco, Patrick and Hans Deckers (l to r). 48 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
Four-week cropping cycle What is the status now the first cropping cycle has been completed? Deckers: “GTL fortunately understood that we wanted to move forward quickly, and that any malfunctions or technical hiccups in the system had to be resolved very quickly. Filling is easier and better without a middle shelf, and the problems with the remote control have been sorted out. There are certainly gains to be made in the processes outside the growing room, but that's something we are developing further together. Existing techno- logy, taken from the automotive industry for example, can also be incorporated. Robotisation can lighten the load of taking the mushrooms off the belt One of the problems is the huge variety of different packaging, generally trays for the supermarkets. At this farm we grow brown mushrooms conventionally in a four-week crop- ping cycle, to make the most of the harvesting technique. Growing is now starting to run smoothly, with production that is just as good as on a regular farm. At first we had some problems with the size of the holes in the belts. The ope- nings were based on the experience of Distri- champ in Belgium where white mushrooms in a single layer system are grown. But with the brown mushrooms for our market, you need dif- ferent sized holes. We also had to change the casing soil (BVB Carbo 9). You need a casing without too much fibre, otherwise it clings to the stumps, and when the mushroom is placed in a hole the fibres work their way upwards. But we seem to be on the right track now. We eventually intend to expand the scale of this farm, which now has eight growing rooms. And that plan is likely to materialise soon."
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