To minimize any disruptions throughout the company, our facilities and equipment are managed by our highly trained maintenance team. This team oversees the installation and implementation of new equipment, as well as the regular maintenance of these facilities. On a daily basis. they ensure that our disinfections system, lighting systems, irrigation systems and climate systems are in excellent working condition.
We’d like to highlight some of our innovative equipment:
Greenhouse hygiene starts with Bevo’s Hygiene Team. To keep our facilities free from fungi & bacterial diseases, we have extensive hygiene protocols in place for our plants, our employees, our customers, and our suppliers.
Bevo’s Hygiene Team consists of up to 11 people, depending on the season. They are responsible for all aspects of hygiene at Bevo, including the structures, machines, tools, and everything that comes inside the walls. The Hygiene Team ensures all entry cleaning & disinfecting machines, hand sanitizers & hygiene mats are ready to go! They also ensure that the employees change into Bevo clothing & footwear as soon as they enter the facility, prior to the start of work.
Unfortunately, we also have to keep visitors out of the greenhouse, as they can bring in plant pathogens from the outside into our facility. This is part of our extensive protocols to keep disease out of the greenhouse.
Between all different activities, before and after every break, or any other time an employee leaves the greenhouse itself, they must wash and disinfect their hands prior to re-entry.
Bays are cleaned and disinfected before any new plants are laid, and again after it is emptied for shipping. Pathways and warehouse floors are disinfected daily and foot baths are used throughout the facility when transitioning from one zone to the next. Our “watershed” is a totally separate area off the main warehouse where the team is responsible for ensuring all wagons and trays used to transport our products are washed and disinfected upon returning from a shipment prior to re-entering production. This team oversees the washing and disinfecting of all trailers and shipping containers prior to loading our products for transport.
The Hygiene Team is one of our most important teams, as they are at the tip of the spear for keeping Bevo disease and pest free from the onset! They support our supervisors by keeping everything clean and disease free!
This is a moving sowing machine that can be used anywhere in the greenhouse, primarily to sow cucumber seeds. It picks up the blocks in rows in order to be able to sow the seeds accurately.
This is a stationary seeding machine that allows us to automatically seed into plug trays.
We automatically grade many of our young plants using our computerized grading machine. It is especially useful when grafting plants to be able to match sizing perfectly. It allows us to place the baby plants in any configuration in the tray (for example, only using 120 of the 240 holes in the tray in a staggered pattern).
This self-propelled machine is used to insert bamboo stakes into the grow blocks. It is used directly in the growing bays.
Developed by our own team, this massive machine spans an entire bay width, allowing our specialized teams to work in the crops without walking through them but “hovering” over them, either laying down or sitting on the machine. They can do things like putting sticks in and clipping plants to sticks without having to bend over for hours at a time. A great back saver to be sure!
Plants need to be spaced in order to give them room to grow and better access to the light. We use a spacing machine to do this work. It picks up the plants from one area, brings them to another area, and then the belts can separate and lower the plants back to the floor with space around each plant.
We have 3 main potting lines that fill up pots with growing media, after filled allowing our team to work on the pots in a standing position. Efficient and healthier for the body!
We have an automatic roof washing machine that uses the roof gutters as tracks to be able to roll over the entire roof surface in order to keep that glass ultra clean and crystal clear!
Much of our rolling equipment is new or near new. This prevents breakdowns at crucial times in our busy seasons, and ensures we have all the latest safety systems and equipment.
We have Bulls that tow rolling wagon trains, forklifts, spacing machines for plants, transport vehicles, golf carts and more. After all this is a large facility to get around in!
We use the Water IQ Diamond System to disinfect all water we use for growing in the facility, including incoming city water, water from our substantial water storage pond, and for our recycled water.
This ensures all bacteria and other biological matter in the water is completely removed and the water is completely safe to use for all growing.
At the heart of our facility is the Hoogendoorn Climate Control System. This system is constantly calculating all aspects of the weather, light, humidity, temperature and more in order to give direction to the automatic climate system to do what it has to do, such as opening and closing windows, increasing or decreasing heat, turning fans on or off, controlling the watering strategy, turning lights on or off, and so much more. All this is done under the direct control of our head grower and the growing team, as it still takes the human hand to make the fine adjustments required for your baby plants!
We have invested significantly in Hybrid lighting. To date we have set up 60,000 m2 with the Hybrid lighting. This area consists of 50% LED & 50% HPS lights (double lighting).
This gives us the ability to give a complete lighting spectrum for the plants. We can use both lighting types together, or just LED or HPS, depending on what your plants need at any given time.
Our irrigation system is automatic. We have the ability to treat the irrigation water with every kind of fertilizer and also stabilize the water with hydroxide peroxide.
And finally, to ensure all our specialized equipment always has the power it needs to do the job it needs to do, we have Automatic Generators to supply power to the entire facility whenever required.