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A space to promote your local production?
Are you a small craftworker in the agri-food sector who favours the short circuit, in search of a space to promote your production? A place to work side by side with other producers who share the same values as you?
Become the owner of a space in a business cluster made up of companies similar to yours, the ‘Short Circuit Factory’.
A facility on the Short Circuit Factory site offers multiple advantages for small producers, including the pooling of certain investments, synergies and partnerships among production or distribution companies on the site, where entrepreneurs will share staff, spaces and equipment in order to make economies of scale.
The Short Circuit Factory
The ‘Short Circuit Factory’ is a large-scale real-estate project supported by the BEP. Quite naturally, therefore, this Namur-based project decided to settle in Ecolys®, a business park linked to sustainable development and run by the BEP.
This little factory, which covers 2,760 m², includes:
- spaces/workshops to process fruit and vegetables grown by market gardeners in the region,
- storage areas and
- a logistics centre.
The preserves, jams, sauces, fruit juices, ready meals, etc. produced will not be exported all around the world. They are intended for local consumption via food cooperatives, school kitchens, rest homes, restaurants and even private individuals.
A bottling plant – a poultry abattoir – a cutting workshop
Jars will be used to preserve and distribute all these preparations; they will be returnable to avoid packaging waste.
The factory will also include a small local poultry abattoir, eagerly awaited by Walloon breeders.
The facilities will be supplemented by a cutting workshop to enhance the value of the breeders’ products and a distribution tool for fair-trade organic products.
The partners
The partners are on the one hand the founders: Ethiquable, Papilles Ravies, the Petit Abattoir coopératif, the Légumerie and the Bocalerie de la Fabrique Circuit Court, and on the other hand, the SPW Agriculture (Walloon public service responsible for agriculture), the Société Wallonne and the Triodos bank.
The total investment is valued at just under three million euros.
The building permit application has just been submitted with a view to starting construction from the autumn.
Interested?
If you would like more information about the project and/or if you want to acquire a space in the Short Circuit Factory, don’t hesitate to contact Marc Dehareng on 0474/74.21.35 or at mdh@bep.be
Read The Short Circuit Factory by Paysans-Artisans of 02/12/2019