We were going to see Pilzland farm after the German conference, and Frank Lemmen from Limbraco International gave us a drive. Pilzland is large German mushroom producer. Limbraco built this new modern farm for Pilzland in 2022 in Schwaigern together with GTL Europe.
Limbraco is a good supplier – for those who know it. They do not make wide promo of themselves – even having 50th anniversary in September 2023 the company made it quit. But with such approach they have lots of clients who want them – and no-one else.
UMDIS had a small talk with Frank Lemmen about Limbraco activities.
Frank, Limbraco: The owners started company in 1973, firstly they concentrated on building farms for pigs and chicken – and later they went to the mushroom business. In 1979 they acquired “Poels Machinebouw” company, which produced shelving and machines for mushroom growing. And year by year we went deeper in the industry – and now we totally specialise in mushrooms. And do lots of innovational projects in mushrooms.
Inna, UMDIS: And you, Frank, when you personally entered the company?
Frank, Limbraco: I have been working for 22 years in Limbraco. We are not a big company, just 30 employees. So, we have short lines – quickly react when a grower has a question or want to do something.
Inna, UMDIS: And what are other advantages?
Frank, Limbraco: Second one – we are going for the small projects as well. Third – we do a lot of innovations, automatization. If a client wants customised solutions that are not already on the market, we are the best for this. Why? Because when a grower has a question and we do not have immediately a solution for that – we invent it for him.
Inna, UMDIS: What can you supply?
Frank, Limbraco: We specialised in mushroom farms – not do composting facilities. Limbraco builds turnkey all over the world. We built projects or supplied some particular solutions like machines, climate systems, control computers for farms in Australia, New Zeeland, Canada, North and South America Europe, Israel. We built huge number of farms in Holland and Germany. To the farm in New Zealand we supplied 200 picking trolleys. Now we do automatization in a farm in Peru.
Inna, UMDIS: And what innovations you can offer for already existing farms?
Frank, Limbraco: What we say, the most important thing is to bring the mushroom after picking as soon as possible out of the room. When you do packaging and all the logistics in the room – that cause a lot of space, extra money and extra labor. When transport mushrooms out of the room with harvesting belts – you start work effectively. Our blue belts can be used on existing farms well in new farms with traditional shelving as. We can put the belt on side of the shelving, put our trolley in it. And we also can use that trolley without the belt, so we can use it in a traditional way. And using this harvesting belt system for usual shelves is much cheaper than choosing for one of the other systems which are available in the market. If it is for a new farm or an existing farm, that doesn’t matter.
Inna, UMDIS: This year you had a joint booth with GTL on Mushroom Days. You work on many projects together with them?
Frank, Limbraco: Yes, that`s right. For customers we are not a part of GTL, we work independently but, we work together in a lot of projects all over the globe. For example, now we do with them a large project for Greenwood Mushrooms in Canada. We built heating lines, cooling lines, steam and water lines. We will ship about 5 kilometres on stainless steel pipelines and dividers all prefabricated to Canada.
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