Koninklijke Maatschappij de Wilheminapolder

Koninklijke Maatschappij de Wilhelminapolder (KMWP) is the biggest agricultural company in the Netherlands north of the city of Goes, Zeeland. Recently they bought a Condor Endurance for their 1400 hectare arable farm, where they grow potatoes, onions, sugar beet, cereals and alfalfa. Agrifac visited their company and had a conversation with the Director Vincent Coolbergen and Jan Nagelkerke, the driver of their new Condor Endurance.

The ownership of the company is in the hands of 400 members who do not actively interfere with the business but appointed a managing board to take the day-to-day management and the responsibility of the company. “Together with a manager, I run the company and its day to day activities. We do everything ourselves in the company, including spraying,” says Coolbergen proudly. Yet this pride in the spraying work has been a trend break with their previous business operations. Publishing sustainability reports have made a major contribution to this. These reports include key figures on the basis of which you can benchmark how you perform in the field of sustainability. This makes KMWP the first arable company in the Netherlands that publish their sustainability reports. “I think that other companies are also busy with that, but have nothing published yet, so that is the difference.”, according to Coolbergen. He is also urging other companies to publish reports like this. They are currently speaking with a group of growers from the south of the country that they have convinced to write a sustainability report as well.

This trend break leads to a turnaround inside the company. “Now I am proudly showing my sprayer and I used to hide the sprayer in the barn because then I didn’t have to talk about it. Things are different now, we are spraying consciously”, according to Coolbergen. With the sustainability reports, the company can show they are doing well. It includes a clear objective, also in the field of crop protection. In the report, it says that they are going to work very hard to reduce the amount of active substances and crop protection agents. They will still take the quality and quantity of the product very seriously.

The investment in the new sprayer was for KWMP something that was on the agenda, because the current sprayer needed to be replaced. That was the moment when we started talking with Agrifac and we discussed the technique and requirements that we needed internally, this is where we found our match with Agrifac. In the end, the machine was bought in December 2017 and started this spring with spraying the crop with it.

“The choice for the Endurance was made because we were simply looking for capacity. We did not look at other brands. It is essentially due to the Endurance with its 8000 litre tank. We were looking for capacity and we found that in the Endurance”, says Coolbergen. In addition, the spraying technique is paramount. Something that was determined later, once the machine was operating in the field. Coolbergen indicates that despite hearing the story and being enthusiastic about it, you only really notice what it yields when you start using it yourself in the field. Then you really get a picture of the biggest benefits. “We have previously had the experience that a lot is always promised. And of those 100 promises often only 80 will come true, but never, apart from in this case, all 100 promises actually come true. That is Coolbergen’s experience. “With the Condor Endurance we were promised 80 in the early days, but it turned into 100 in the end. That is the opposite to what we have previously experienced so you can understand that we are very pleased”.

Jan Nagelkerke has been a permanent employee of Koninklijke Maatschap de Wilhelminapolder for 37 years. Within these years he has focused on spraying for over 17 years and for the last few weeks he has been allowed to work with the Agrifac Condor Endurance. His first reaction is full of praise: “The machine is so incredibly stable, even when cornering. The suspension is great. Normally with an older sprayer you sometimes see that the inner top goes towards the ground. I have not experienced that here yet. It is the crescent moon on which it lies and which keeps it in balance. When you make a turn, the
boom just stays neatly horizontal. It dives nowhere in the crop and therefore you do not cause any damage. In addition, it never sprays too short on the ground and on the other side, not too high. It doesn’t blow away, it stays nice and horizontal. The Condor Endurance continues to give the spray image you want.”

This Condor Endurance is equipped with HighTechAirPlus (HTA). This allows you to vary between 70 and 200 liters per hectare with the same nozzle. In addition, the StabiloPlus chassis ensures that the boom remains very stable. Especially in the province of Zeeland, where the wind is constantly blowing, the HTA cap is the only solution for spraying crops. This is because you always have the perfect droplet size at any wind speed.

The comfort of the Condor Endurance is very good. Especially the driver who says that to me almost every day, which is very special. Yes that is nice, of course it is his life because he spends so much on that syringe. He also told me he is less tired since riding the Condor Endurance. He can handle more. The capacity of the machine has increased, but that of the driver has also increased. We have also made great strides there. Simply because the machine works in a pleasant way.” – Vincent Coolbergen