Petersime is the undisputed worldwide leader in designing and manufacturing incubators and hatcheries.

In recent years Petersime has been growing fast and gaining an increasing market share. To keep pace with this fast growth, it was decided in 2009 to start a major expansion programme.

Petersime therefore acquired a further 22,000 square metres of land next to the current Petersime site. The expansion plan consists of several phases and includes the building of a new production hall, new logistics zones with loading docks, staff and meeting facilities and a new Customer Centre. At the same time, current facilities will be modernised and investments for energy saving using solar panels are planned. All new facilities are expected to be fully operational by mid-2011.

The expansion plan is on schedule and the first phase has now been finalised: last month, the new production hall and logistics centre became fully operational.

Paul Degraeve, Managing Director of Petersime, said: "With the new production and logistics facilities we aim to ramp up the production output to double capacity. This high production capacity will allow us to keep on serving our customers on time, even with the high demand for our new S-line of single-stage incubators that we launched early this year."

The second phase, concerning the construction of the new Customer Centre featuring a demo centre and meeting facilities, is already underway. This customer centre will also be the new home of the Internal Sales and Customer Service departments.