A healthy fruit grower in a healthy environment

Fruit grower Royakkers has implemented a vast number of initiatives to make sure the company operates as sustainably as possible. Logical, because you can’t grow high-quality fruit without a healthy climate. We’ve compiled a short list below. 

Smart drain collection

Growing strawberries, raspberries and blackberries requires lots of water. In order to waste as little of this water as possible, we use a mini water-purification station. We collect as much water as possible, and reuse it a second or third time. We also recover fertiliser using this method. The computer calculates how much fertiliser the collected water contains, and how much we need to add. It all means we can operate very efficiently without losing precious resources unnecessarily.

We filter and reuse up to 40,000 or 50,000 litres of water from our fields every day.

Rain and sun

We try to use sustainable energy as much as possible on our fruit farm. The cooling cells are powered by energy generated by 500 solar panels on the roof of our building. Cooling cells are crucial to preserve the quality of the fruit, but they do consume a lot of energy. Providing the cooling cells with green energy means we’ve already taken a major step forward in making our fruit cultivation sustainable.
Besides the sun, Royakkers also uses rain to improve sustainability. Rainwater is, of course, a natural watering system for our fruit plants, but the benefits don’t end there. We also use rainwater in all our staff hotel’s toilets.

Wind turbines will also be installed on our fields shortly, so we’ll be able to provide an even larger part of our fruit farm with green energy.

Cooling cells as a heat source

As we said, cooling cells consume a vast amount of green electricity. The cells release a lot of heat to cool the goods inside them. We use the heat generated by the cooling cells for the underfloor heating in our staff hotel. At times when underfloor heating is not needed, the cooling cells heat the water for showers in the hotel.

Increasingly sustainable

Making and keeping a company sustainable is a long-term project. We’re constantly looking for ways to make our fruit company and its operations more sustainable, and reduce our ecological footprint.