"Maybe all nurseries will have LEDs in ten years"

Gipmans Planten is the first Dutch plant grower to use LED lighting. Charles van Dijk, account manager of horticulture: "As a company we were due for a next step. A number of departments were due to be changed. This was a good opportunity for us to start using LED."

Ahead
Charles: "Gipmans Planten was founded in 1970. After such a long time you have certain ideas. You have to continue to finetune them. Good sense gets you a long way and in conversation with customers we look for the most suitable opportunities." Charles emphasises that Gipmans wants to be prepared for the future. "Maybe all nurseries will have LEDs in ten years and HPS will be gone completely. You don't want to join the back of the queue, but participate and think. At the moment we are alone. In the area of LED we will soon have a lot of information with which we can stay ahead of others."

Superduo
André: "The combination of HORTILED Top and HPS (HSE NXT2 600 Watt) meet the needs of the plants perfectly. They profit from the heat given off by the HPS armatures. The LED armatures don't give off heat and make sure that the temperature stays at the right level. They also allow a saving of 40% on electricity use and this fits perfectly into Gipmans' ISO26000 sustainability policy." If the plants end up in a greenhouse without light or with just HPS after propagation, this isn't a problem. André: "The plant doesn't know the difference. You can add up the PAR light of all light sources. I always say: a micromole is a micromole. With LED it is possible to steer certain plant characteristics."

Future
Charles thinks it was a good decision to invest in LED. Charles: "The growth speed of the plants remains unchanged, but we hope to see a difference in the way in which the plant grows. The plants should end up in the generative phase more quickly due to the lighting. We will see whether it is a big difference over the coming years. We think it will be."

Gipmans started using the lighting three weeks ago. The first pepper plants have already left the building. The total surface of the lit greenhouse is 9,000 m2. The company has around 50 hectares in total and has a production of 500 million plants per year.

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