‘No bigger smokehouses, but faster and more efficiently’

At VSD we know about techniques, equipment and technology. And as a customer you know what you want. Together we come to very beautiful customized solutions. Recently, we developed the perfect drying- and smokehouse for the fish trade of the Roeleveld firm.

"The thing that works good”, explains director Hans Kooij, "is that we really sit down with our customers. And the person they speak to is also the person who is going to develop their equipment. Thanks to these short communication lines, we can quickly switch and start engineering."

Special cleaning

For instance, the family Roeleveld wanted two new smokehouses they were able to use during a long period of time. "If the catch is big, they need their maximum capacity”, Kooij explains. "All of our machines have an automatic cleaning program that can be turned on at any time, but this is not useful when the production is big. Therefore we invented a special reception for the tar that is released. This can be drained at any time, without the production to be stopped."

Indirect and direct burning

"Furthermore, the fish trade from Scheveningen wanted all fish species having a beautiful color, flavor and bite", says Kooij. "When smoking eel and trout it is also about something else: the fish needs to have the right color at the fish bone. Therefore we work with the reuse of the burnt gases from the burner in the smoke chamber. This ensures that special color and of course that delicious smoky flavor."

Cold and hot smoking

A third focal point was the possibility to be able to smoke cold. Kooij: “Both smokehouses can smoke hot and cold separately. They are in fact multi-functional, which also saves a lot of space.” The team of Roeleveld is satisfied, as Benny and Dirk Roeleveld are telling: “The new smokehouses are not bigger than the old ones, but more efficient and faster. They meet the strictest environmental requirements and they are a beautiful sight!"