Platform for the food and beverage industry
Europe's most modern French fries factory stands in Poperinge, on an interconnected 9-hectare site. The Dutch company Aviko built a complex there where 175,000 tons of fries are produced annually. Good for 120 new jobs and an impressive construction project.
Aviko is a European producer of fresh frozen potato products. A greenfield was transformed into a new and sustainable factory site in just two years. Contractor Alheembouw was responsible for making the buildings wind- and waterproof and for the finishes such as sandwich panels, painting, ceilings, skirting boards, etc. "The buildings cover an area of approximately 65,000 m2. It was immediately one of the largest Alheembouw construction sites in 2021," said Piet Vandenberghe, director of industry at Alheembouw. "The plant includes a reception and sorting center, a production hall, a cold store with shipping, packaging areas and a water treatment plant. An office building is also planned. The great challenge was to connect all these buildings together in a limited space and on a plot crossed by three roads. We built almost up to the plot boundaries."
The site to be built consisted of three different patches of land separated by streets. This required working with pipe-racks. For example, the water treatment plant is on another plot and the pipes run across the road via a bridge with a sound wall. We see the same scenario at the receiving and sorting center. The potatoes arrive at the plant, are sorted and washed and then transported by road to the second plot, where the production hall and packaging department are located. "After packaging, the products go to the 40 m high cold store," Vandenberghe explains. "It is not a prefabricated building like the other structures. The cold store consists, as it were, of racks stacked on top of each other, surrounded by sandwich panels that provide insulation and vapor tightness. At the same time, the cold store had to fit seamlessly with the other buildings. Good planning, coordination and cooperation were crucial."
The water treatment plant also deserves a moment's attention. That is Alheembouw's own work and was poured on site, with PE-lining in the concrete in several places. That liner protects the concrete from the aggressive environment in the water treatment plant. "Usually, we also work with round tanks, but here it was about rectangular ones," says Vandenberghe. "Prefab may seem logical, but it is absolutely out of the question because you are working with couplings that cannot guarantee watertightness.
Alheembouw has the necessary experience in industrial construction. We have often worked for the frozen food and French fry industry. Good preparation and a strong construction team with a lot of know-how are the basis for projects of such size to run smoothly. Construction started in 2019 and the complex has been fully operational since this spring. It was quite satisfying to convert this greenfield into a high-end industrial site, completely in line with our expertise," concludes Piet Vandenberghe.
TECHNICAL DATA SHEET
Builder: Aviko (Poperinge)
Architect: Vandewynckel Architects (Poperinge)
Prime Contractor(s): Alheembouw (Oostnieuwkerke)
