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Surveillance to sneeze at

Reichenau Gemüse eG, a vegetable growing co-operative from Reichenau Island in Lake Constance on the German-Swiss border, now protects its peppers with a high quality Geutebrück video security system. Not just because Germans are particularly partial to the fruit of the capsicum annuum, but because it needs to deter vandalism and safeguard production continuity.

2012 was the first growing season for its new 11 hectare production site at Beuren an der Aach, near Singen in ‘mainland’ Baden-Württemberg where a tall 110 000 square metre, high-tech glasshouse accommodates 250 000 pepper plants. After an early break-in with associated damage led to expensive repair bills and an interruption to production, the five families in the venture decided in future: better safe than sorry. So to safeguard their contract for the supply of peppers to Edeka stores across southern Germany, they had local installer Casicuro GmbH fit a Geutebrück video system and have since experienced no further incidents.

The exterior of the massive double-skinned greenhouse, the large fuel tank and pack house loading bay and entrance are key areas which are monitored with Geutebrück TopLine and Basler megapixel cameras. These all switched to infrared operation after dark to provide 24-hour cover. Their high quality pictures are automatically recorded by the central re_porter-IP/SE hybrid recorder only when movement is detected in the camera streams. For convenience of operation the system offers both local and remote access.

In hot weather pepper production here needs eight litres of water per square metre per day, so safeguarding the supply is another important aspect of the security concept. Seventy percent of the required water comes from the rain collected on the site and stored in two large reservoirs. These are monitored to prevent contamination, or failing that, to ensure early detection and prompt mitigation.

In this high-tech operation, the green, yellow, orange and red peppers growing on four-metre tall plants are harvested with the aid of 47 hydraulic electric vehicles. These automatically transport the picked fruit to the adjoining pack house along a track consisting of heating pipes set into the floor.

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