A 20-year partnership between a Suffolk equipment company and a Belgian manufacturer has been marked by a visit of Filip Deltour to Quality Equipment (QE) at Woolpit.
Ludo Deltour, Filip’s father, invented Paneltim, a durable plastic panel when he started recycling plastic pallet covers to reduce waste. he met up with Glyn Baker, QE’s founder, at an exhibition in Utrecht. Glyn immediately saw the potential of the strong, hygienic panels and became one of the first distributors. The panels are now widely used throughout the pig industry, particularly as pen divisions and gates.
Despite being different from its continental counterparts, with considerable use of straw, and a high proportion of sows being run outdoors, the British pig industry has proved to be an important one accounting for a significant proportion of the 8,000m² of Lichtervelde-based company’s weekly output, says Filip.
Quality Equipment recently extended its storage area to stock an extra 5,000m² of Paneltim to meet the growing demand, having also installed a plastic welding machine to enable it to make panels to farmers’ individual requirements.