This year Dutch greenhouse grower LKP Plants in Moerkapelle decided to renovate, modernize and make the entire company more sustainable. The management consisting of the three brothers Wim, Hans & Marco Koolhaas have therefore decided to thoroughly renovate the three existing locations of approximately 7 hectares. This means that the entire greenhouse from cultivation floor to screen installation will be replaced. LKP Plants is also expanding with a new modern greenhouse at the same location.

Installer Huisman Scherming is responsible for all double and triple screening installations in both the renovation project and the expansion part. In addition, the new greenhouse will also be equipped with a façade roller screen installation. All installations are fitted with Ridder screen cloths. With these renovations and the new greenhouse, LKP Plants will soon be ready for the future again.

Development
The original plans for the renovation and new construction go back many years. In 2016, Hans Koolhaas and Dave Boer of Huisman Scherming sat together for the first time to discuss the wish and demands of LKP Plants, the technical installation options of Huisman Scherming and the climate-technical screen solutions of Ridder. Partly based on the wishes of LKP Plants, Ridder has started to develop a fire-retardant aluminum screen cloth.

Aluminum cloth
At the grower’s request, Ridder has developed a new screen fabric with aluminum strips; the fire-retardant RSS FR Ridder Sun Shading screen cloth. LKP Plants has opted for an aluminum fabric because of the screen quality and reflective properties. “The incoming light is completely blocked by the aluminum strips,” says Ridder Product Specialist Johan van Erven. “Certainly in combination with an open fabric, there is still sufficient opening for ventilation through the fabric. Another advantage of the aluminum strips is that on a clear night a cold radiation is reflected from the ‘clear sky’, so that the leaf temperature does not drop too much. Due to the unique composition, the RSS FR screens have a high reflection value, a low absorption value and a low convection value, making it a perfect screen for virtually any crop.”

Big project
In addition to the new RSS FR screens, LKP Plants has also opted for the diffuse energy screens (RES 10 D FR) from Ridder and the blackout roller gable screens (RBO 100 R FR W) from Ridder. The nursery of LKP Plants is not the first project where the new RSS FR fabric from Ridder will be mounted, but it is the largest to date. In total, more than 260,000 m² of Ridder screens are installed at LKP Plants by Huisman Scherming. Of this, almost 100,000 m² is RSS FR fabric in different variants that best suit the type of cultivation.