CSR

FresQ Red Star BV considers Corporate Social Responsibility to be very important.There is still the desire for further growth and innovation, however, a precondition for growth is social awareness with a balance being sought between people, planet and profit.
Attention to people’s welfare goes further than just having a good remuneration structure.Investing in training opportunities, paying attention to working conditions and offering chances to long-term unemployed as well as respect for human rights, equal distribution of wealth and rejecting child labour and all play a role.

The parties that FresQ Red Star BV has far-reaching cooperation with also consider Corporate Social Responsibility to be very important. The concern makes extra efforts as far as providing good working conditions, training and safety are concerned and with clear results:satisfied employees and long-lasting relationships with both employees and clients.Openness and honesty create an atmosphere of mutual trust with business relations enabling knowledge and understanding to be shared.

There are exceptional facilities in the offices of Red Star Trading and FresQ Red Star BV and at the Kaaij Group’s cultivation sites. These include a sanitary block and a canteen that provides good meals and these create an optimum working environment for the employees.There is also a good work climate where there is a constant temperature and absorbent ceiling panels provide sound insulation.
The concern is a recognised practical training company and Intermediate and Higher Vocational Education level and university level students follow their work placements here.

Economic growth and the environment are often at odds with each other.Energy sources are being exhausted, tropical rain forests are being felled and environmental scandals regularly feature in the news.The solutions are simple for our growers:the cultivation sites partly use SonT and LED lighting, cultivate as organically as possible, recirculate water, save energy by using combined heat and power systems among other things on their sites, and separate the rubbish that they collect.

A trial was started in 2007 using 0.85 ha of LED lightingin which the relationship between LED and SonT lighting was looked at.There are a number of different developments in the LED lighting field at the moment.In the future the costs per Joule will be lower with LED lighting compared with other types of lighting and it is also expected that the working life of LED lights will be longer than that of SonT lights.One shortcoming is that LED lights don’t give off enough radiant heat so this definitely has to be improved.The absence of radiant heat has harmful consequences for the cultivation of healthy plants.New technologies and developments ensure that both the working life and energy efficiency continue to improve constantly.

The cultivation sites use completely organic cultivation methods and this means that corrective agents are only used to make minimal corrections when this is unavoidable.The plants are fertilised in such a way that they receive sufficient nutrition to make it possible to harvest the best quality tomatoes.All the excess water, including nutrients, that is given to the plantsis disinfected, recirculated and then given to the plants again, which reduces the burden on the environment.

Most of the cultivation sites have combined heat and power systems.The plants grow thanks to light, heat, water containing fertiliser and CO2. The combined heat and power system uses gas to produce heat and power.The heat is used to heat the greenhouses whilethe current is mainly fed back into the power supply network.The power is also partly used for the grow lights that aid plant growth in the winter.In this way the cultivation sites produce power that is a lot cleaner and more environmentally friendly than a comparable power plant that destroys the heat by cooling for example.Even the flue gases from the combined heat and power system are used for CO2 in the greenhouses.

Purchasing sustainable energy also substantially reduces the demands put on the environment by the cultivation sites and they try to make a contribution to the environment by ordering more at a time and having combined deliveries.
Red Star Trading also takes its environment into account:it invests in alternative energy sources (storing heating and cooling capacity) and separates its rubbish when it’s collected.

Underground storage for storing heating and cooling capacity has been constructed under the packaging centre.In the summer the warm air from the premises is stored for heating the building during the winter.The cold air is used for cooling in the summer.

Rubbish is collected separately as paper, plastic and ‘organic’ waste and these materials are then recycled.Waste from the tomatoes is also collected separately for composting.

The company can’t continue to exist without making profits.In FresQ Red Star BV’s vision, profit includes not just the financial performance of the enterprise but also the social and economic contribution that the organisation makes to society.FresQ Red Star BV is socially aware and uses part of its profits to invest structurally in the welfare of its employees and in society.

Last year it was decided to support a number of local activities including:

• Sponsoring Samenloop voor Hoop in Westland, which is a symbol of the fight against cancer;
• Participation in the Zomerbloemententoonstelling (Summer Flower Exhibition) in Naaldwijk;
• A two-year sponsorship agreement with the Westland athletics association Olympus’70.

FresQ Red Star BV also makes a small contribution on the international front:money was made available last year to the Alpe d’HuZes institution, which demands attention for the fight against cancer.