Infrastructure: designed by Grontmij
Chongming Island is situated in the estuary of the Yangzte River near Shanghai. The park, which covers an area of 27 km2 and is known as Greenport Shanghai, is the result of a joint venture between TransForum, Wageningen University and Research Centre, agricultural entrepreneurs from Limburg and the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (SIIC).
Grontmij provided its support to this consortium for the realisation of the Master Plan. The work focused on the design of the necessary infrastructure.
Showcase
During the ‘Innovating Metropolitan Agriculture’ seminar in Beijing, the Master Plan for the development of Greenport Shanghai was presented in the presence of the Dutch and Chinese ministers of agriculture.
Greenport Shanghai is to be a showcase for sustainable production of high-quality food close to a major city. Production, processing and trade functions will all be integrated in the park so as to guarantee chain management and quality control. Production will take place according to the principles of the so-called cradle-2-cradle system. This entails working with closed cycles whereby all residual products and by-products will be recycled.
North Holland's Agriport A7 as a Dutch example
As one of the guest speakers at the seminar, Sylvo Thijsen, chair of the Board of Directors of Grontmij NV, gave a presentation on the subject: 'Building the value added infrastructure of tomorrow'. A good Dutch example of this is the development of Agriport A7 in the province of North Holland. In this project, innovative infrastructure systems have been applied in the fields of logistics, waste, energy, CO2 and water. Similar kinds of systems are also being used in the design of the agro-food park Greenport Shanghai, where the physical conditions are comparable with those in the province of North Holland.
Grontmij's Expertise
Because of this know-how and its experience in China in the fields of water, energy and waste, Grontmij was asked to support the consortium in the execution of support projects for the realisation of Greenport Shanghai. Therefore, a letter of intent has been signed by TransForum, Wageningen University and Research Centre, Knowhouse, the Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation and Grontmij.
Participating organisations and companies
TransForum is an innovation programme which offers sustainable perspectives to the Dutch agricultural sector. They bring knowledge-based institutes, various layers of government, social organisations and companies together in order to acquire new knowledge and competencies. This results in the development of innovative value propositions for the agricultural sector.
'Innovating Metropolitan Agriculture' is the result of cooperation between TransForum, Knowhouse, Wageningen Universiteit and Research Centre, SIIC and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS).
Knowhouse is an organisation that promotes the interests of agricultural entrepreneurs and SIIC is responsible for the realisation of the agro-food park. Completion of the park has to be finalised before 2010. In that year Expo Shanghai 2010 will take place.