On Friday March 4 the first pole was hit into the ground for the construction of The Greenery at the soft fruit location Breda. This was an important step for both real estate company WDP, The Greenery and the city of Breda. The decision was between collecting all of The Greenery's activities in
Barendrecht or to remain in Breda. In the end the choice was made to renew the Breda location, diagonally across from the old building. WDP is realising a construction location of around 20,000 m2 at the current location at the IABC in Breda.Steven Martina: looking forward with pride
"This is an especially important day for me," says the brand new CEO of The Greenery, Steven Martina. "I have a special connection to the location in Breda. I came here in 2004 and it's great that we can continue the soft fruit activities on the same location. Back then we had a turnover of 25 million and now it's 120 million. We want to further expand our activities in this lovely soft fruit area. The ambition had been there for years, but it has now become a reality. We are going to make something great from this together with our growers. The Greenery has been through rough waters and on days like this we can leave that behind and look forward with pride. I would like to thank WDP for showing faith in The Greenery. It's not nothing to enter a project like this."
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Joost Uwents: investing the heart of the fruit and vegetable sector
"We are taking on another logistical challenge for the fruit and vegetable sector," said the CEO of WDP, Joost Uwents. "After the investment in Barendrecht our partnership with The Greenery is being deepened once again, we are investing in the heart of the fruit and vegetable sector together. The building that is there now will soon be history. The construction location will be a complete and modern warehouse so that the logistics will be realised in the most efficient way. The location will be partially set up as Zachtfruit (Softfruit) DC for the The Greenery and later part will be made available for other parties from the fruit and vegetable sector."
Steven Martina and Joost Uwents.
Ad Boeren: replacing yellow M with strawberry
Ad Boeren of the PAC soft fruit also gave a short speech. "Breda and soft fruit are inseparably linked. In the name of the growers I indicate that we are very happy that the location in Breda will be maintained. We supply beautiful products from Brabant that we can be proud of. It is a necessity for there to be logistic centre here so that everything is lead to the right track efficiently. We have to keep the time between the harvest and the store as short as possible." Laughing: "Of course, we wouldn't be growers if we didn't have something to moan about, so we would like to be more visible and ask the Breda council to replace the large M for McDonalds on the pole with a nice strawberry. That would be putting Breda on the map!"
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Alderman: keep dreaming
The Alderman complimented the growers by insisting to the council to maintain this location in the right way, as there were other parties who also wanted this piece of land. I can't comment on the visibility of the yellow M, but it's good to keep dreaming."
Cheers!
The completion of the new building is predicted to be over the course of the fourth quarter of 2016. In the intermittent period the logistic operation of The Greenery Soft fruit will remain at the current location. The investment budget is around 9 million Euro spread out over the next two years.
