The Breton cooperative Sica produces 230,000 tonnes of vegetables every year.

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Fred Tanneau / AFP

Heavyweight on the vegetable market with 230,000 tonnes produced each year, the Breton cooperative Sica finally has its giant packaging platform in Saint-Pol-de-Léon (Finistère).

"We have just started," welcomes Marc Keranguéven, president of Sica, known under the brand Prince de Bretagne.

Since September, no appeal has hindered the project launched in 2011, but never completed until then due to repeated legal proceedings.

A few hundred meters from the headquarters of the cooperative, the platform, whose construction work lasted eighteen months, occupies 18 hectares of land on which 7 hectares of buildings were constructed.

By mid-February, the station will centralize the reception, preparation and dispatch of 80% of the cooperative's volumes of fresh vegetables.

Until now, several stations spread over the whole of North Finistère were responsible for carrying out these operations.

About thirty shipping docks

"The first objective is to reduce logistics costs", underlines Marc Keranguéven, reporting a saving in this area of ​​30%.

Thus, the cooperative's customers will not have to go to the various stations to fill their trucks.

The platform will also allow the cooperative "to access new markets thanks to the pooling of resources", as well as to producers "to access all the possibilities of diversification and packaging".

In particular, the station has 31 shipping docks, 15 of which are reserved for major clients of the cooperative, who represent 70% of its turnover.

At a cost of nearly 50 million euros, it will eventually employ around 100 people.

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