Technology

The basic equip­ment of the Lap­pen tree nurs­ery includes inno­v­a­tive machines which make up a large fleet. Spe­cial har­vest­ing machines and in-house inven­tions such as the root bar­ri­er machine, cut­ter bar and bind­ing machine ensure that plants are treat­ed gen­tly. GPS-con­trolled plant­i­ng machines facil­i­tate the effi­cient plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion of the pro­duc­tion steps.

The port­fo­lio also includes the cut­ting edge “root­ball lifter” which, togeth­er with var­i­ous car­ri­er vehi­cles, is capa­ble of mechan­i­cal­ly lift­ing root­balls mea­sur­ing between 40 and 250 cm. This takes place up to eight times per tree. It allows the plants to be trans­plant­ed to a dif­fer­ent loca­tion where they can devel­op new fibre roots.  The root­ball cloths used by The Lap­pen tree nurs­ery, which are made of hes­s­ian and wire bas­kets of fast-biodegrad­able mate­r­i­al to assist in this growth.

Inte­grat­ed pest man­age­ment is a com­bi­na­tion of nat­ur­al mea­sures and the spar­ing use of chem­i­cal pes­ti­cides, which pro­tect crops from dis­eases and pests.  After deter­min­ing the dam­age thresh­old, plant pro­tec­tion prod­ucts are used in the tree nurs­ery Lap­pen. The weed con­trol takes place part­ly mechan­i­cal­ly.  The plants only get as much fer­tilis­er as need­ed, this sus­tain­able con­cept leads to a major reduc­tion in the use of N‑fertilisation (max. 19 – 27 kg pure N per ha). The Lap­pen tree nurs­ery avoids fer­til­i­sa­tion with phos­pho­rus com­plete­ly. The tree nursery’s aim is to keep the leach­ing of nutri­ents from the soil – caused by fer­til­i­sa­tion – to the low­est pos­si­ble lev­el, in order to pro­tect the envi­ron­ment. In its endeav­ors in this area, Lap­pen analy­ses a large num­ber of soil sam­ples and, in terms of fer­til­i­sa­tion and pest con­trol, relies not only on its own exper­tise and long-stand­ing know-how, but also seeks the assis­tance of exter­nal con­sul­tants.  The leach­ing of nutri­ents through fer­til­i­sa­tion is kept as low as pos­si­ble. Through these mea­sures, the plants at Lap­pen can ripen; they are robust and are less sus­cep­ti­ble to sec­ondary pests.

The desire for sus­tain­abil­i­ty is also reflect­ed in the selec­tive irri­ga­tion sys­tem using tanker trail­ers, which leads to a reduc­tion in water con­sump­tion. The mod­ern sys­tem of drip irri­ga­tion is used on areas of up to 40 hectares.

The MPS cer­tifi­cate award­ed to Lap­pen also shows that the com­pa­ny places par­tic­u­lar atten­tion on envi­ron­ment-friend­ly pro­duc­tion process­es, low con­sump­tion of resources and sustainability.