Family business
How it all began
The chicken barns
It started in 1988, when Harrie van de Weijer was looking for a more economical and more environmentally friendly alternative to oil or gas to heat the chicken barns. Harrie discovered clean wood waste which was no longer suited for recycling. He bought a second-hand stove as basis and turned it into an installation to burn wood. A biomass plant, when biomass was not even in the dictionary yet. That plant worked so well he even had a surplus of heat. A new waste stream with value.
Stale bread, our fundament
Not long after, Harrie discovered another waste stream, in the form of stale bread. New regulations did no longer allow making breadcrumbs from stale bread, so the bread did no longer have a purpose. So Harrie came up with a new application: food for his chickens. To make the bread suitable for this purpose, he built an automatic reducer and a dryer from old machines and parts. He kept on improving, until he had a complete drying line which could separate and dry and he could feed the thousands of chickens in his barn. It were the first expressions for his natural urge to counter waste and using the waste.
That same passion is also present in the DNA of the other family members of Van de Weijer, who were working in the company from an early age, and it is still the foundation of Van de Weijer Drogerij.
Now 30 years later
Van de Weijer Drogerij today
It is now thirty years later. Our company dries 117,000-ton waste streams per year, in separate halls for various product types. We separate and dry 24 hours per day, 7 days per week according to GMP and HACCP guidelines. But most importantly: with the same ideology as back then.
Less waste, more value
We add value to waste streams. We do so because we believe it is important to lose as less value as possible. We generate our own sustainable energy from biomass, in an installation we developed ourselves.
For burning, we use wood waste streams which can no longer serve any other purpose. We supply so much energy, we could power 100,000 households for a year.
Who wants to save, has to be smart
To work efficiently, we have to be smart. The ingenuity of Harrie is running through the veins of our family team. There is no waste stream we cannot handle, also product streams which have never been dried. We separate and dry on one line; quicker, more efficient, and safer. We test, measure, and optimise until we get the most out of your waste streams with minimal effort. We even build a new customised installation if required. Just like thirty years ago in the chicken barn.
