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Innovatie in Snowflake

Eurofresh Farms now has a second location for its greenhouses in the small town of Snowflake. Snowflake is about a four-hour drive from Willcox in Arizona. Alkupro has designed a new type of greenhouse for the Snowflake location.

The project in Snowflake was a challenge for both Eurofresh Farms and Alkupro. The end result is impressive. Alkupro has delivered 9 hectares of Venlo greenhouses with a:

• span size and section size of 4.8 m,
• planting height of 5850 mm,
• aluminium gutter construction to drain water over the covering,
• two-sided continuous ridge ventilation with integrated insect netting system,
• white base,
• ‘double’ ventilation system

Two-sided ridge
ventilation with integrated insect netting system.

Innovative ventilation system

Because of the great planting height, the white base and the ventilation capacity, the temperature in the greenhouses in Snowflake can be easily regulated and Pad-fan cooling is unnecessary, despite the fact that the space needed for insect netting does reduce capacity somewhat.
The innovative ventilation system with continuous ridge ventilation makes sure that sufficient ventilation capacity remains despite the netting. Feel free to contact Alkupro for more information about the unique power system.

Integrated netting system

The greenhouses also have an integrated netting system that can be installed easily before or after construction on the outside, where the netting is protected in a storage system.

Other locations follow

The ventilation in combination with planting height and white base make the greenhouses in Snowflake very special and successful. The concept is being copied at other locations in Mexico and France, for example.

More challenges

This project posed even more challenges, such as the length of the greenhouse. With a length of 220 m laid out in the middle of the desert, factors such as expansion and water drainage needed special attention. We also had to work with a double, mixed mechanism. The project would always have been a challenge, if only for its size. A challenge Alkupro has met successfully, resulting in 9 hectares of Venlo greenhouses constructed exactly as Eurofresh Farms needed and wanted.