UNamur has a large fruit-growing estate on the Domaine d'Haugimont. This heritage, soon to be a hundred years old, is a marvellous example of how Man, Animal and Plant have been working together for decades. This orchard-grazed ecosystem is an ancient agro-ecological model that meets many of the environmental, societal and climatic challenges of the future. As such, it must be preserved, redeveloped, promoted and used as a laboratory for life, production and awareness-raising. A partnership with reinette & Co has been set up to achieve these objectives.
Given the sheer size of this estate (11ha!), it's not always easy for a university and its managers to keep track of the various tasks on an annual basis, optimize production and ensure that as many people as possible benefit from it.
In parallel, Reinette & Co is a cooperative set up to bring together various high-stem orchard players in Wallonia who are dedicated to producing and adding value to apples, pears, plums and cherries in untreated high-stem orchards. It provides various services at different stages of the chain from the orchard to the finished product by joining forces with different cooperative partners.
Exchanges between Domaine d'Haugimont and the Reinette & Co cooperative show that there are great synergies and converging interests between the two parties.
The agreement specifies how fruit from UNamur's Domaine d'Haugimont will be made available to the Reinette & Co cooperative in exchange for management services (harvesting, processing, pruning, planting) and animation with partners (visits, training, events).
UNamur is making part of the Grand Verger available, enabling Reinette & Co to have a minimum quantity of fruit estimated with a view to achieving a certain efficiency of service to be valued within the framework of this partnership.