The environmental impact of the Seed Connect Centre

The environmental impact of the Seed Connect Centre

As Rijk Zwaan is growing, we are continuously innovating and expanding. At our site in De Lier, we are building the Seed Connect Centre: a new seed processing and seed storage facility. Needless to say, when designing the new building we have taken our environmental impact into account.

At the Seed Connect Centre, seeds will be extracted from the fruits and then cleaned and treated in preparation for sale. The new building also includes a special area to make it easier for us to host visitors and show them what we do at Rijk Zwaan.

Energy-efficient

Solar panels will be installed on the roof and the new building will be natural gas-free. A thermal energy storage system, supported by heat pumps, will allow us to heat and cool the building in a sustainable manner. The thermal energy – in the form of heat in the summer and cold in the winter – will be stored underground on our own premises.

Water usage

Our focus on sustainability extends beyond the building itself to the operations inside the Seed Connect Centre. For example, the extraction process to remove the seeds from the fruits uses more than 200m3 of water per day. To obtain the necessary water in a sustainable way, a large water basin has been created at the rear of the Seed Connect Centre. This collects the rainwater from the Seed Connect Centre and also from our greenhouses. After filtration, this rainwater can be used for the extraction process.

Additionally, we store rainwater in the ground – currently with an approximate volume of 40,000m3 – for use in dry summers, for both the extraction process as well as irrigation.