Innovative machine helps Limburg berry growers with harvest

In the Limburg town of Melderslo, a collaboration between engineers and local farmers has led to a beautiful innovation in blueberry farming. The new picking machine from start-up FineField promises to solve the lack of seasonal workers, by taking over the work of many berry pickers.

The blueberry and seasonal labor

In recent years, the blueberry made a huge advance in supermarkets. The healthy image of the fruit made it extremely popular in a short period of time. Imports grew, but so did the cultivation area in the Netherlands. The cultivated area in the Netherlands grew from 530 hectares in 2010 to 934 hectares in 2018, including 575 hectares in Limburg.

To pick the berries, Limburg growers need around 1650 workers per season. They are mainly migrant workers from Eastern Europe, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to find candidates. They have the jobs in our country all to themselves. Berry growers and brothers Marcel and Leon Driessen from Melderslo ran into exactly this problem at their farm. They need two hundred pickers for the harvest on their 70 hectares of land.

Technical help

In 2012, the brothers called in the help of machine builder Mike Janssen and technician Peter Geurts. Together they developed a harvesting cart, which supported the collection and removal of the berries in crates. This already saved manpower, especially in the logistical side of the process.

This initial assistance was successful, but there was room for improvement. In 2018, the men united in the start-up FineField to develop an improved machine. A harvester that manages to pick more berries than the previous one, that blows leaves and twigs off the belt, takes more boxes and drives past the bushes without a tractor. In comparison, a picker without a machine can pick 7 to 8 kilos of berries per hour, while this new machine reaches as much as 500 kilos per hour with four employees.

The Future

Last berry season, the machine was successfully tested and also suggestions for further improvement emerged. The goal is to have the machine operate completely autonomously, without the presence of pickers. FineField hopes that in the distant future, seasonal workers will no longer be needed at all and growers will be able to carry out the process with only permanent employees.

This is good news for berry growers, but also for FineField. The expectation is that this start-up will soon grow into a machine builder with dozens of employees. Already, interest has been shown in the machines from the United States, where President Trump's immigration policies are causing a scarcity of seasonal workers in agriculture.

Source: Dagblad De Limburger