Koninklijke Maatschappij de Wilheminapolder

Koninklijke Maatschappij de Wilhelminapolder (KMWP) is the biggest agricultural company in the Netherlands, situated north of the city of Goes, Zeeland. Recently they bought a Condor Endurance for their 1,400 hectare arable farm, where they grow potatoes, onions, sugar beet, cereals and alfalfa. Agrifac visited them and had a conversation with the Director, Vincent Coolbergen and Jan Nagelkerke, the operator of their new Condor Endurance. 

The ownership of the company is in the hands of 400 members who do not actively work within the business but appointed a managing board to ensure the daily 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 within 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 busy preparing this too, but have nothing published yet.”, according to Coolbergen. He is also urging other companies to publish reports like this to show the importance of sustainable practices. 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 whereas before I used to hide the machine in the barn because 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 for KWMP was something that had always been on the agenda, because the previous 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. It was then that we found our match with Agrifac. In the end, the machine was bought in December 2017 and the following spring we started spraying the crop with it.” 

“The choice to have the Endurance was made because we were simply looking for a capacity machine. We did not look at other brands. It was essentially due to the fact the Endurance has an 8,000 litre tank. We were looking for high capacity and we found that in the Endurance”, says Coolbergen. In addition, the spraying technique is paramount. Something that was realised later, once the machine was operating in the field. Coolbergen indicates that despite hearing the story behind the brand and being enthusiastic about it, you only really notice what it yields when you start using it yourself in the field. It isn’t until this point that you really realise the biggest benefits. “We have previously had a less than positive experience and received a lot of broken promises from manufacturers. It wasn’t until we started working with Agrifac that 100% of the promises they made actually came true. That is the opposite to what we have previously experienced so you can understand from that, 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 to the new sprayer 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 of the boom goes towards the ground. I have not experienced that here yet. It is the crescent moon on which the boom lies, and which keeps it in balance at all times. 

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 far from the ground and on the other side, never too high. The terrain doesn’t impact the boom levelling, doesn’t blow away, it stays nice and horizontal. The Condor Endurance continues to give the spray image you want, and applies exactly in the desired place.” 

This Condor Endurance is equipped with HighTechAirPlus (HTA). This allows you to vary between 70 and 200 litres per hectare with the same nozzle. In addition, Agrifac’s 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 comments on it almost every day, which is very positive. It’s nice to hear he is comfortable and happy with the machine because he spends so much of his working life in the sprayer. He also told me he is less tired since operating the Condor Endurance. He can handle more because the capacity of the machine has increased, leading to an increase of efficiency of the driver too. We have also made great strides in efficiency, simply because the machine works in a better, more pleasant way.” – Vincent Coolbergen