Farming - Roggel, Limburg, Netherlands
Sil Moonen BV is a mid-sized blueberry business with its own marketing and production site. The business was set up by Sil in 1986 as a landscaping business-cum-nursery, which given his agricultural training was a logical choice. Where the business has been built from the ground up, a considerable amount of change in terms of activities has taken place over the years. In the beginning the emphasis was on garden design and construction; some of these plants were cultivated on their own farm and also cultivated for wholesale. In 1990 a former horticultural company situated on the Mortel road was purchased from the Bex family. Part of this purchase included an asparagus field from which the full ground activities were born. This cultivation still exists today with an area of approximately 13 hectares and acts as an ‘additional' cultivation as it links in nicely with our main activity. The cultivation of blueberries began in 1996 through a collaboration with the Van Zuilen family under the name of DuBeCo. Plots were initially hired but in 2002 became privately owned and have now grown into approximately 24 hectares of production fields at 2 locations in the south of the country. In 2008 we laid down a plot of berries in Drenthe in order to set up production in the north of the country; this in relation to risk dispersion and crop extension (on average 2 weeks later). The nursery has grown to approximately 14 hectares. In 2015, together with a German company we interactively took part in a blueberry project in Oldenburg on a plot of land of 30 hectares of peaty soil purchased by our company in 2009. 20 hectares have since been realized. At our company at Mortel 27 in Roggel we have over the years made a U-turn from arboriculture to Blueberry cultivation. All in all Sil Moonen BV has more than 60 hectares of tradable blueberries. With a production of between 500 and 600 tonnes a year we are one of the leading self-marketing businesses in the Netherlands.
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