Wokas Team.
The headquarters of the company Wokas.
From the left: Łukasz Stepiuk, the director of production and Mirosław Piekarski, casing soils department manager.
Raw materials being prepared by a head loader.
(Syria, Liban and Saudi Arabia) as well as Australia are supplied by ship. Asked about expansion and exports, Mirosław Piekarski, the casing soils department manager said that the availability and prices of transport tremendously impact the level of expansion. The company therefore primarily supplies the large local market as well as Central and Southern Europe and is seeking opportunities to expand its activities in the Middle East and Australia using the harbour in Gdynia. Competitors from other countries rely mainly on imported peat and do not have a comparable range, so they supply markets further away from the focus of Wokas from a logistics perspective. To complete its portfolio of services, the company decided to open its own horticultural centre, offering substrates for flowers and ferti- lisers. They also own a production facility for flowerpots and have become an official dealer of Massey Ferguson supplying not only mushroom growers but also farmers with tractors and other equipment.
The human factor We visited the casing soil production facility in
Rudnik, which is the second in the family of production facilities. One year ago it was completely refurbished and reorganised. The company used this opportunity to introduce an interesting building concept - a module facility that can be disassembled and relocated to other locations where peat bogs might be found in the future. The director of production, Łukasz Stepiuk, laughed that the floor is the only stable element of the building as the other components of the construction can be taken down and and transferred to another site. There are bunkers for substrate and casing soil in the building, filled with material previously prepared and mixed by a head loader. Peat is mixed with defe- cation lime and chalk that is also mined by the company from its own resources located nearby. The mixed material is left for 24 hours after which the lab checks the pH and sodium level. The company also sends samples to an external lab and compares the results. Stepiuk, who manages all the production facilities at Wokas, told us how important it is to find the right peo- ple for this job. The manager of the facility in Rudnik, Mariusz Ilczuk, has been working at the company for over 20 years, and the same applies
’You can change technology, but
the right people are not easy to replace’
MUSHROOM BUSINESS 23
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