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’.