Disaster due to listeria contamination. The impact of the zika epidemic. It may be far from home for many fruit and vegetable companies, but architect Herman Bessels deals with it every day. "Mice squeeze through a four millimeter gap and within a year the fifth generation will be nestled into a building. We are relatively unfamiliar with pest free building in the Netherlands, but we will have to deal with it as the food demands become stricter. This demands a totally different way of thinking."
Knowledge manager
Bessels mainly focuses on food and logistics with his architecture and engineering bureau from Twello. "It would be better to call us 'knowledge manager', as food has so many secondary aspects. We work with twelve people and have a huge network of specialists in all aspects, such as logistics, cleanability, idiot-proof building, sustainability, etc. Our vision is that we don't work with generalists, but link specific experts together, or manage knowledge. Financial feasibility and turnover must also be remembered.
"The specific thing in the food sector is the huge whimsicality of the market. There isn't a contractor who knows where he will be in a year, let alone five or ten. It's order tomorrow and deliver yesterday. Last July there was contact for the first time between our bureau and a contractor and five months later there is a fully operational 2,500m2 factory. A week has 168 hours and this gives us a lot of opportunities. Buildings have to be realised as multi functional as possible, so that they can be financed too. This makes the job interesting, but also difficult," says Herman. "At the moment we have a number of projects in the fruit and vegetable sector, but we are still at an early stage and the contractors often only want to publicise it on the opening day."
Hygiene of an operating room
Herman certainly doesn't see the food demands as a threat, but mainly as an opportunity. "Look at what the distrust in China for local milk has brought the Dutch dairy sector. There is a profit model that has no equal here. Back in the day, if the local food supplier delivered spoiled goods, only the local villagers would get the runs. Now products fly all over the world. The basic of hygienic building is to make sure nothing gets infected. The best disinfection is prevention! The Netherlands is the market leader in food safety and a food safe building is an integral part of this. If you look at the company buildings of certain seed breeders, as far as hygiene is concerned they match an operating room. The standards are getting higher and we're only at the start."
Herman is a champion of even stricter divisions between departments. "There is a lot of talk of high care and high risk, but too often factories still have two doors open to each other, whilst trying to create a so-called overpressure. Slot gutters, the back sides of fluorescent tubes and the tops of evaporators are often sources of contamination, places where uncontrolled bacterial growth takes place. We try to look at a food factory as a 'terrorist', which shows where your weak spots are the quickest. Of course you can find a perfect way to catch mice and flies, but you can also prevent them from getting in."
Radiate pride
Another aspect Harman Bessels emphasises among his customers is to show the company's pride and to radiate it. "We invest in buildings with an open structure, in which visitors can see how the company works. Bessels has beautiful examples of buildings in which visitors can see the entire company process from a 'cockpit', without coming into contact with it. Selling is helping buy. The product being sold has to be given emotion. We built a visitors and inspiration centre for a caterer who invites his customer to come to eat at night. This is the place where the demands, desires and experiences of the customers are philosophised over for him. This makes customer enthusiastic."
The architect looks towards the future positively. "The Dutch food architecture is a global leader and is full of innovation. At the moment we are thinking about the possibilities to have the cooling done through the floor. This way companies can have a much lower amount of energy due to the huge cold buffer that is stored in the floor. All in all there are still enough challenges in the future. Our specialty has brought us a lot of work. We got through the crisis years well and have been able to keep our experienced employees. We are purely focusing on the Dutch market. We think three hours of driving is enough, even if we could get enough work elsewhere."
