Mooij Agro
Hotraco Agri
Hotraco Horti
Hotraco Group
Sergey Matskevich from AgroventM (our Russian dealer) was in contact with Artem Belayav, the Manager of Belaya Dacha in Tambow, Russia. He was asked for his experience in potato storage and to offer the best solution and design for the long-term storage of French Fries potatoes. Belaya Dacha in Tambow is responsible for storing the final batch of potatoes to be processed. Therefore, good quality potatoes are needed till the end of the storage season.
In the storage facility of Belaya Dacha, which was built in 2016, they store 8,000 tons of French Fries potatoes. This long-term storage is meant for the recently built first French Fries factory in Russia. This first Russian large-scale fries production facility was built by a Joint Venture of the Russian Belaya Dacha Group and Lamb Weston/Meijer, a world leader in potato processing.
To make this storage a success, fans with speed control for optimal air capacity were installed. These fans can offer a high capacity when it comes to drying, a low capacity during cooling with outside air and even a lower capacity during mechanical cooling. “Using the fans in such a manner offers us savings in energy costs”, Mr. Belayav confirms.
Artem Belayav continuous:
“Agrovent M offered and installed full integration of control for mechanical cooling in our Croptimiz-r storage computer. This is an easy to operate control system, since it is delivered in the Russian language and offers us a good remote (App) solution”.
AgroventM also included a humidifier, to minimize weight losses. This can be measured easily with the Weight Watcher, which offers a steep learning curve for the store manager. Last but not least, the CO2 sensor and extraction system are a key for the best frying result!
“In short we can say, that complete control of temperature, humidity and CO2 level creates ideal conditions for the crop. Powerful outside ventilation (with largest 1.000 mm fans), tender cooling (with the lowest possible delta T) and condensation-free humidification (big pad wall) is managed by a unique storage controller (Croptimiz-r) with 24/7 technical support from Russian and Dutch specialists in real time online service”.
From the moment of designing until realizing a well-functioning storage, the cooperation between both companies went very smooth. Mr. Artem Belayav concludes: “From the moment of start-up we appreciate the help Sergey Matskevich offered and his advice so that we now have the best product coming out of the storage. It was also for that reason, that we doubled our storage capacity with the same equipment in 2018”.
