At GreenTech Amsterdam, a large part of the final Nygaia Plugline could be seen in operation for the first time. Raalte has been working hard towards that moment recently. With the innovation, growers will soon make their own biodegradable biobased substrate plug with this machine, on-site, significantly reducing transport volumes with the substrate.
"It means that instead of using 40 containers to ship substrate, soon you will only need one container for shipping raw materials to customers," Patrick Alferink of Maan Biobased
Alternative to a peat substrate
The exact composition of Nygaia, an alternative to peat substrate, is the 'Coca-Cola secret' of cooperation partners Maan Biobase Products and Klasmann-Deilmann. What is clear is that it is a fiber structure made of polymers. The chosen structure and the chosen raw materials together make the plug absorb water well, but also release it. "It can absorb up to nine times its volume in water," Rob van der Meer told us.
Rob van der Meer, Eduard Wagenmans and Raymond van Ispelen at the Nygaia Plugline
Pizza knife and candyfloss mixture
At that time, the machine was not yet fully assembled. The machine makes rolls from a biodegradable and partially biobased polymer mixture. From these rolls, another machine makes the plugs. In the video, we see a kind of 'pizza knife' cutting plugs from the roll.
These plugs, which must be stable during cultivation, are also industrially compostable. Growers can make Nygaia more or less dense according to their preference.
The video below, made at GreenTech Amsterdam, gives a good impression of the final machine. Only the part where the mixture is made into a fleece on a roll is not (yet) visible. During a visit, we saw that this part is already up and running behind the scenes. It does look a bit like a candyfloss machine, we thought at the time.
For more information:
Maan Biobased Products
Klipperweg 16
8102 HR Raalte, the Netherlands
Tel: 0572 35 27 71
[email protected]
www.maan-biobasedproducts.com
www.maan-group.com
Klasmann-Deilmann Benelux
[email protected]
www.klasmann-deilmann.com