Tom de Jong has been working at the family business Van Duijn de Jong, co-owner at the Dinteloord location, since 2018. In this 11.5-hectare greenhouse, he works together with his father Peter, who started as a grower in 1985.

On January 1st 2023, the merger took place between De Jong and Gebr. Van Duijn. After the merger, both companies continued working together under the name: Van Duijn De Jong Aubergines. The company now consists of four locations in West Brabant and Zeeland with a total size of 39 hectares. They grow, sort and package more than 23 million kg of aubergines per year. Due to the growth of the company and the complexity of the work, they started using Crop Controller at the beginning of this year.

“The switch to Autonomous Growing was quite a change. In the beginning, it was difficult to let go of control. But I soon learned to trust the system.

I used to be mainly concerned with reactive actions such as adjustments due to the weather changes, now I can finally focus more on the cultivation strategy. I can now delve more into the analysis of the data. We recently discovered that our autonomously controlled greenhouse, at the same temperature settings, is more energy efficient than a greenhouse that is managed manually. Those are interesting insights.

Working with Crop Controller gives me the space and peace of mind to concentrate more on details.”