The Netherlands
June 5, 2015
Rijk Zwaan develops new vegetable varieties and sells the seeds that are cultivated. The headquarters is located in De Lier, the Netherlands. It has 2500 employees in 30 countries worldwide. The range consists of more than 1000 varieties of about 25 vegetable crops.
Rijk Zwaan approached Seed Processing Holland (SPH) for an installation in the Netherlands. Together with René Hendriks (Head Operations Coordination Centre), we review this project.
In order to clean bulk crops, like spinach and beet seeds, Rijk Zwaan was looking for a new seed gravity separation installation to replace their existing installation. This machine sorts the seeds by weight (density) in order to obtain improvement of the quality of the seed batch.
Seed gravity separation installation
The specific goal was to operate this installation by 1 FTE (full time employee) and to increase the capacity of the installation by running automatically during employee breaks and during the evening.
The main reason for Rijk Zwaan to cooperate with SPH on this project, is the fact that SPH offers the “triangle” seed gravity separator as well as being able to implement customer specific requirements.
The entire project has been a long-term process. The first budget requests and accompanying discussions took place in 2013. Mid 2014 the order was assigned to SPH and in February 2015 the installation was delivered to Rijk Zwaan. During preparatory discussions between Rijk Zwaan and SPH in the engineering stage, changes have been made to the logistic design based on 3D drawings. The designs were shown and discussed with Rijk Zwaan through team viewer sessions (remote).
In case another project will be initiated in the future, the requirements would be specified even better in advance in order to get a faster and clearer idea of what is desired. To achieve this, an engineering phase could be started during the quotation stage in order to be better prepared.
Proper dust control & buffering and automatic switching to empty boxes/bins via valving.
A seed gravity separator with fully automatic control (hydraulic adjustment of inclinations, fan speeds, vibratory feeder) via a recipe page.
A seed gravity separator with fully automatic control (hydraulic adjustment of inclinations, fan speeds, vibratory feeder) via a recipe page.
Proper dust control & buffering and automatic switching to empty boxes/bins via valving.
René Hendriks states that a FAT (Factory Acceptance Test) has been performed, which is a good way to implement minor improvements before shipment. Therefore, the installation and start-up on the processing location went well.
The goals that were set by Rijk Zwaan have been amply achieved:
- Dust-free workplace (Health and Safety)
- Density (weight) separation of spinach and beet seeds , with a capacity of 2000 kg per hour
- 1 FTE during daytime, automatic processing during the evening
- The entire machine is easy to operate via recipes by touch screen
- A firm, safe installation
Species
