The Netherlands - Oosterwolde | Smilde Foods

About the Smilde Foods Nereda WWTP

In 2006 Smilde Food purchased a Nereda for treatment of the wastewater at Fano Fine Foods Oldenzaal factory, starting it up in 2007. After the company shut down their operation at this factory in 2009, the client decided to transfer the treatment plant a few years after start-up to their Oosterwolde production facility. To cope with the required higher treatment capacity the water level of the reactor was doubled or increased from 360 m3/day to 500 m3/day. The plant in Oldenzaal was the first 'green field' industrial Nereda.

The effluent is discharged into the municipal sewer.

“Royal HaskoningDHV installed the system and taught me the intricacies of it. Our wastewater became much cleaner, which resulted in a decrease of the discharge costs from 300,000 to 60,000 euro per year.” (Alle Bergsma in H2O)

“Operating the Nereda isn’t rocket science. So not only is it great that it requires little work on a daily basis – I estimate an hour a day – it's also nice to know that the management role can be handed over if needs be. Ale Bergsma currently carries this out with another colleague and we use Royal HaskoningDHV as a backup.”

“We're a very satisfied client. And that is not only due to cost reduction, because the gains we make by treating the water before discharging it have already been taken into account. No, it also lies in the fact that the Nereda is so compact, without separate sedimentation tanks or other compartments. This makes the Nereda ideal for us, because our space is limited. Another important point is that the plant is flexible enough to accommodate the fluctuations in our production process, such as during the barbecue season in the summer when we produce much more and employ twice as many people as the normal 150.”