Dutch style in Ireland

Over recent years, Ireland has adopted many techniques of Dutch origin in the mushroom growing sector. To name a few – shelves, the way of filling, incubated compost and growing techniques. But until now Irish growers stuck firmly to their traditional way of building sheds or Irish tunnels. The Codd brothers, Leslie and Raymond, from Tull-ow, about an hour’s drive from Dublin, have broken the mould. Panbo from Beringe constructed a Dutch style panel building for the brothers.

Both brothers have at least 20 years of experience in mushroom growing. Leslie worked for a while in Canada, but on his return to Ireland 12 years ago followed in his brother’s footsteps and started his own farm. Business went well, and on Leslie’s farm production from both farms was packaged and marketed. Leslie Codd: “We were actually doing quite well. But we started to run into problems with the lack of space, and expanding the existing companies wasn’t feasible. So we decided to take the plunge, shut down the old farms and build one new farm, on a new site. We had already bought the land and had a construction permit for Irish sheds”. Raymond adds: “Then we noticed an advert in Mushroom Business for Panbo. So we could have some more information, we invited Ser Huibers to come and take a look in Ireland. Ser took us to Austria, where he had already supp¬lied a building with a flat roof and told us that he could put up a prefab farm for just 20% more than the price of Irish tunnels. That seemed a great opportunity, so we decided to go ahead with Panbo”.

Prefab elements
One of the problems the brothers ran into was obtaining the right building permit. A traditional Irish farm consists of a number of individual sheds, but what Panbo planned to build was one large building housing the growing rooms, boiler room, canteen and areas for packaging and storage. The fire safety aspects of this type of building demanded particular attention. But finally, the bureaucratic pathway was smoothed, and building could start. In May 2008 the first heavy equipment drove onto the site to start preparing the ground. Raymond Codd: “It all went like lightening from then on. We laid the foundations and the concrete floors with local companies. The concrete is slightly thicker under the walls, but apart from that the whole floor can be poured in one go. When we started building the actual farm, Panbo sent 2 people over from Holland who stayed here for 3 weeks to supervise the project. The rest of work was done by us with the help of a local builder. The prefab elements came from the Netherlands, so putting it all together was like playing with a giant Lego set. The walls are 140 millimetres thick and the ceiling panels 180 millimetres. As you can see, the ceiling is also the roof of the building; there are steel elements in the walls and ceilings that hold the entire construction together. This means you don’t have to put up an expensive steel construction first before building the rest in this framework. You build a couple of walls, place the roof on top and then continue in the same way”. The actual building was up in a few weeks, but finishing all the details took rather longer. Raymond explains: “Once the shell is up, you have to make sure it is vapour tight. To do this you use kind of strips that are fixed over the joints using a special sealant. All the corners have to be sealed too, inside and outside. No easy task!”

Dry feet
The brothers now have a farm with 18 growing rooms, each of 432 square metres growing surface arranged in 2 rows of 9 that open onto a wide, central corridor. Alongside the corridor is the packaging for the mushrooms and cold stores, while the front of the building is reserved for the canteen, storage area and boiler house. Just like on each Dutch farm, the growing rooms are filled from the compost floor through large doors, so that filling and emptying and harvesting and other activities are kept completely separate. This is a huge advantage according to Raymond. “We can control the hygiene aspects much better like this. All the activities are strictly separated, and the pickers especially really love the new set up – no more wet feet for them traipsing from one shed to another. The mushrooms don’t have to be transported through the rain anymore either. This is great if you happen to live in Ireland!” The shelving used on the farm was supplied by Limbraco. Together with Thilot, Limbraco also supplied the modern head-filling machine. The climate installation, including Fancom computers, came from JF McKenna in Northern Ireland.

Wood burner
Heating is generated using a wood burning furnace. This is a large steam boiler that is powered by burning wood chip-pings. The boiler runs continuously and ensures that steam is generated for cook out and to humidify the growing rooms, but also to heat water via a heat exchanger. The warm water then flows to the heating blocks for the climate controll installation.

The furnace is fuelled fully automatically by augers from a silo, where the wood chips with a size of about 20 millimetres are stored. Raymond: “The installation has a capacity of 938 kilowatt-hours. That’s a lot, but in this way we hope to cut some 25% off our energy bills. The chips are sourced from woods that are replanted after felling, so in fact we use renewable energy sources. We burn biomass. We also intend to erect a wind turbine with a capacity of 150 kilowatt-hours to generate electricity. I think that in the future this will help us keep our energy costs low. Although oil prices have fallen drastically in the last months, I doubt if they will stay that way. We advocate sustainable energy, and not just because of the price”.

Irish market
The first room at the new farm was filled on 6 November 2008. They use a 6-week schedule with 3 flushes, so each week 3 growing rooms are filled with incubated compost from Custom Compost from nearby Gorey. This compost is incubated with Sylvan A15 and covered by casing soill from Harte Peat. At the moment production is almost 40,000 kilos per week, 15% of which is harvested as flats. The rest is picked with closed caps – smaller than 50 millimetres diameter. Leslie Codd explains: “Contrary to most Irish farms we don’t produce for the export market, but purely for the domestic market. Irish consumers buy closed cap mushrooms up to a size of 50 millimetres. It’s as simple as that. If we supply larger mushrooms then we have a problem with our customers.
A great advantage of the Irish market is naturally that we are one of the few companies unaffected by the free fall of sterling. We notice other companies targeting the Irish market now, which has greatly reduced prices, but luckily we already have a huge head start on the competitors. We supply a lot to Aldi Ireland and to the Dublin market. As the credit crisis is forcing people to cut back on dining in restaurants in favour of entertaining at home, you can see the market shifting in Dublin to supermarkets”. Both brothers are full of praise about the co-operation with Panbo. There are plans to expand the farm in 2010 with a further 6 growing rooms, which can just be added to the side of the existing building. Raymond Codd mentions the customer friendliness of Panbo as a particular plus: “Of course there were a few hiccoughs during the project. But Ser Huibers sorted it all out quickly and to our complete satisfaction. “We knew what to expect before we even started anyway. We are really pleased with the results and would do it all again tomorrow.”

Source: www.mushroombusiness.com