From professional footballer to pig farmer

Since 1928, the Custers family has a mixed farm in Swolgen, Limburg. Over the years, this farm has slowly grown into a beautiful pig farm. After his soccer career at VVV-Venlo, Gert joined the company in 1991. He exchanged his great passion for soccer and especially goalkeeping, for the pigs. At the age of 25 Gert took over the family business and developed it to its current size. The company is now almost 100 years old and looking forward to a bright future.

Growth of the company

The company of the Custers family falls under the Varketing Group and has grown to 500 sows and 5000 fattening pigs through an expansion in 2007 and a new fattening pig house built in 2014. Inno+ chemical air scrubbers and heat pumps were installed at both locations, Swolgen and Horst. At the second, we also included Triple EEE energy recovery.

As a result, gas is no longer needed at either. Because the roofs are also full of solar panels, this makes the company’s production energy-neutral. The heat pump makes use of the energy in the air scrubber where the water has a temperature of about 20 degrees. Because there is floor heating everywhere, thanks to the heat pump, the stables, the whole house and even the family swimming pool are easily heated.

Inno+ Online reporting

During 2022, we updated Gerts system to allow him access to our online reporting tool. This means he has easy access to key data, so he can check if his air scrubbers are working well and can make corrections when he sees the need for adjustments.

Using the dashboard

Gert was always convinced that the air scrubbers were working fine. Now that Inno+ sends the monthly reports it appears that there are still some points of improvement. He is pleased that he can see clearly what can be improved, because he wants his air scrubber to run perfectly, both for himself and for the environment!

Another advantage of the dashboard is that the Inno+ service team can directly monitor the activities that are taking place in the air scrubber at any particular moment or look back to the past. This allows everything to be perfectly monitored and enables the customer and/or Inno+ to react and adjust in time if necessary.

Monitor, Maintain, Perform

Over the last year, we have set up real time monitoring of over 300 locations in the Netherlands using our online system. This is a mix of Biological, Chemical and Pig, Poultry, Cattle farms. Even with our extensive knowledge of 20 years of supplying and supporting Air scrubbers, we learn more about the process each week. This allows us to provide more value to our customers and ensure the technology meets the targets set out in the permits. Perhaps the most important lesson we have learned, a scrubber that is monitored can be better maintained and ultimately perform well.

Monitoring and maintenance – the key to future performance

One of the conclusions in a recent report from Wageningen, was that for us to address the challenges of emission management from farms using air scrubbers. Regular monitoring will become necessary, even compulsory. By developing such as system for farmers to stay on top of the process, we believe this is a significant step forward to meet the challenge.

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Are you curious about the possibilities of our air scrubbers? Then please fill in the form below or contact us at: +31 (0) 77 – 4657360