Construction of a state-of-the-art mushroom casing-soil factory

Kekkilä-BVB is one of Europe’s most well-known professional horticulture companies and the biggest producer of peat and substrate for various horticultural crops and for consumers too. Kekkilä-BVB has built a state-of-the-art mushroom casing-soil factory in Wanssum, a unique development for the Netherlands and Europe.

New port location in North Limburg

The new factory has been created at a newly-developed industrial estate in North Limburg that has its own port location: it’s the ideal spot because peat can be unloaded straight from the ships and stored straight away. The substrate is processed and mixed in the halls (click here to see the video) and then transported to buyers and customers in Europe in trucks, big bags and small packaging.

Seren Copper color specially selected

Construction started in February 2022 and was completed within a year. Kekkilä-BVB wanted the project – which is close to nature and started in what was previously an empty area – to blend into the landscape. This prompted the architect, Böhtlingk Architecture, to select Colorcoat Prisma coating in the color Seren Copper for the external facade. For optimal corrosion protection, the inside of all the panels (in the production halls) have been coated with Colorfarm.

SAB products on both the facade and roof

The factory itself is 200 meters long, 14 meters wide and consists of three halls. Kekkilä-BVB drew up the schedule of requirements itself and chose Peters Bouw en Onderhoud as its turnkey contractor. Sleger Montage BV was responsible for installing all the roof and façade products. It created the facade from blind sandwich panels, SAB WB 100.1000 M16L, and the roof from FM-approved sandwich panels SAB D-FA 70.1000 TL SO. The roof-panel coating is Colorcoat HPS200 Ultra in Goosewing Grey. The roof panels are particularly special: with each one measuring 23 meters, it was possible to close off each side of the roof in one go.

In this video, Arjen van der Meer, the Director of Kekkilä-BVB, talks (in Dutch) about the construction of this very special project.