Bakery Heerschap, Nederweert | The most modern artisanal bakery in the Netherlands

After spending 53 years in the Central Limburg town of Roggel, the Heerschap Group made the move to Nederweert last November. Less than thirteen kilometers away as the crow flies, but it means a huge step in space and in quality. Artisanal quality, that is.

The Heerschap Group includes six supermarkets in Weert (four), Nederweert and Heythuysen, as well as a large bakery. With the move to the Pannenweg II business park, it kills four birds with one stone: (1) the bakery had been outgrowing its premises for some time and has now been scaled up to 3,500 m², (2) the new building means that the increasingly strict food safety and hygiene regulations can be better met, (3) the bakery's machinery could be renewed and (4) the new production location is more centrally located in the service area, which means fewer transport miles.

Site survey

"Actually, the client wanted to stay in Roggel, but the zoning plan did not allow expansion there," says Paul Derckx, director of Derckx BV, which designed and realized the building. "Together with client Stan Heerschap, we ended up in Nederweert after location research and were able to work on the final design and permits. As the designing builder, we had the shell building ready eight months after the environmental permit was granted. The great advantage of working in a construction team, the basis of our formula."

Box-in-box

The building consists of two main parts: the headquarters of the Heerschap Group on the one hand, and Bakkerij Heerschap, which makes all the bread and pastry products for all group divisions, on the other. Derckx: "The bakery part is in fact a shell of over 3,500 m² where the client, together with Roma, built in the entire bakery process according to a box-in-box model, fully in accordance with the strictest food safety and hygiene requirements. In a logical way, you will find the raw materials storage, flour silos, large bread bakery, flan bakery, bakery 'wet', refrigeration and freezer areas and a large packing and shipping area that connects to a large loading unloading pit at the front." Ergonomically, the layout and supporting machinery have been chosen so that the bakers can work as easily as possible. Heerschap is careful with his people; bakers are hard to find in the Netherlands.

Tightly finished bakery "wet" with separate enclosed area for chocolate shop.

Engineering Ceiling

The bakery has a clear height of 7 meters. A technology ceiling was created above the refrigeration and freezer sections and production areas to conceal technical installations and especially pipes and ducts above the ceilings. "In any case, you don't see any horizontal pipes, because that's where dirt can accumulate," Derckx said. "Power points are integrated into the roof so that when they are pulled out, they rise to the ceiling and the walls can be cleaned."

Durable hardwood

The bakery's headquarters and support functions are in an office block that is slid, as it were, in the middle under a large building-wide canopy. To its right is the loading unloading pit of the shipping department, to the left a covered outdoor area. Against the almost entirely black colored main volume, the office block stands out beautifully through its transparent curtain walls and the use of durable slats and facade panels of untreated Siberian larch. At the outdoor areas under the canopy, fiberglass-reinforced concrete panels and aluminum-colored corrugated sheets are applied to the facades.

Modern craft

The entire building is set up as a steel frame on a poured industrial floor, with precast parapets, precast fire and interior walls and hollow-core slab floors. This structure is clad with metal sandwich panels and an eight-meter-high insulated steel roof. Installed on top are solar panels that make the building energy efficient with the economical LED lighting and presence detection. Like the exterior, the interior is a combination of modern anthracite colors and natural materials. After all, modern and traditional is exactly what the bakery wants to radiate with its new accommodation and tasty products.