Anticipating on the food problem
Slootweg is acutely aware that producing enough food to feed everyone is becoming an ever greater concern in today’s world. The growing world population and the social pressure to supply the food needed to allow everyone a dignified existence are important drivers. There is also a rising expectation that more can be grown in less space.
This makes it increasingly important that the basic requirements for the growth process are fully optimized. Achieving this entails correct care of the starting material and a proper relationship between the care and feeding of this propagation material all the way to harvest time.
The substrate plays a key role here, and mixing, screening and packaging are all important factors in achieving top quality.
At the same time, home gardening is a growing trend, further boosting demand for high-quality substrates. And although the quality requirements differ from those for commercial purposes, here too there is a growing demand for substrate that is consistent with private customer expectations.
Slootweg therefore sees growing international opportunities in these segments. We also see our customers increasingly asking for complete production lines, and their investment decisions are increasingly financially driven.
As a result, it is becoming important to be able to provide adequate management information, to link it to production information and to be able to process it in the higher-level systems. Increasing intelligence, both for control and processing, which includes things like recipe-controlled systems, is of particularly great importance.