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The fact that Plospan is ENplus, DINplus and Better Biomass certified was already known. However, the market does not stand sill and constantly demands improvement in the much discussed “sustainable entrepreneurship”. Plospan’s latest certification has been launched and has made it possible to produce wood pellets with a 100% PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) claim.

We started with one of the first vacuum truck a number of years ago, together with leading fitters of the larger heating systems. Since the number of systems that burn wood pellets has grown exponentially because of, for example, the Dutch sustainable energy investment grant grants and the Dutch Renewable Energy Production Incentive Scheme subsidies, the Plomp Group purchased vacuum truck number two. This truck also has all of the standard connections. The daily route of the trucks include office and business premises, poultry farmers, pig farms, calf farms, swimming pools and many private individuals.

“Sustainability is in their genes”

The King’s Commissioner from Gelderland Clemens Cornielje came to see wood processor Plospan’s solar panel project in Waardenburg on Wednesday, 25 August. He hopes that other companies follow the example of Plospan. “This project does not take up a single square metre.”

REPORT ON WORKING VISIT

WAARDENBURG – “Wow! Beautiful!”, Clemens Cornielje exclaimed when he first saw the sea of solar panels on Plospan’s roofs. The Dutch King’s Commissioner had just climbed the ten-metre high stairs to the viewpoint over the industrial buildings. It was a perfect summer’s day for a working visit to the solar panel project in Waardenburg. The bright sunlight reflected from more than nine thousand solar panels glittered in the eyes of the King’s Commissioner from Gelderland like a blight blue mirror.

During the first tour of Plospan’s site together with the mayor of Neerijnen, Harry de Vries, the King’s Commissioner was clearly already impressed. This was due to the amount of power produced by the solar panels, Plospan’s cogeneration plants and the business process itself. Plospan processes 3000 tonnes of wood per week and the King’s Commissioner was able to see this in action: from the tree trunks that are rolled through the planer to the automatic packaging of wood shavings and biofuel pellets.

Cornielje bombarded the Plomp brothers, who run Plospan, with questions about the history of the family-run business, about the companies that had helped to install the solar panel project and about the export of wood products to China. “If not, all those containers would return to China empty. Now they are filled with wood shavings”, Rober Plomp explained.

The King’s Commissioner stated that he had solar panels on his own home and was particularly interested in the delivery of green energy to Liander’s power grid. “So you are actually a power supplier.”

At the end of his visit, the King’s Commissioner said that he was especially impressed by the fact that Plospan’s solar panel project used 2.5 hectares of existing roofs. “This project does not take up a single square metre. The roofs were there already. You see a lot of large solar panel projects with new construction, but there is not much new construction. There are still a lot of roofs in the Netherlands. This should be imitated everywhere.”

He admits that this would take a lot of courage on the part of entrepreneurs. “But if one sheep leaps over the ditch, the rest will follow.” Cornielje hopes that other companies will come to look at Plospan and learn from it. “They won’t have to figure everything out themselves. There are so many aspects with such a project. Plospan has thought of everything here. It is also very impressive how these four brothers reflect on sustainable business practices, how much they know and how it keeps them busy every day. Sustainability is clearly in their genes. With a family-run business, I can say that.”

 

As a family business with a clear focus on sustainability and corporate social responsibility, we were really proud when the former President of the House of Representatives, Anouchka van Miltenburg, who lives in the same area as we do, opened the largest solar panel project in Gelderland at Plosplan’s business premises on Friday, 3 June!

Green energy
Van Miltenburg drove into the marquee, which was set up on Plosplan’s premises in Waardenburg for the occasion, in a Stella Lux solar-powered car. In her speech, she compared our wood-chip-processing plant to the winner of the World Solar Challenge by saying, “Both produce more green energy than they use.”

Largest solar panel project
More than two hundred invited guests attended the event organised by Plospan to celebrate the completion of the 2.5-hectare solar panel array on the roofs of the factory buildings. It is one of the largest solar panel projects in the Netherlands and the largest in the province of Gelderland. The final six panels were put in place on Tuesday, 31 May.

The courage to invest
Van Miltenburg continued her speech by talking about the increasing popularity of solar power and the role played by industry in the use of sustainable energy. She praised Plosplan’s 2.2-million euro investment in solar panels by stating, “Solar power is definitely the way forward, but it needs companies like Plospan, which take their responsibilities seriously and dare to take risks.”

9,240 solar panels
By pushing a ‘big red button’, she symbolically put the 9,240 solar panels into operation together with the four brothers of the Plomp family who run Plospan.

And now we are hoping for plenty of hours of sunshine so we can generate the maximum amount of electricity to meet our own needs and to feed as much as possible back to the ‘grid’.