The roasting plant will be part of the development center in the Green Energy Park, which is currently still under construction, and will go into operation as a company of the group. As Timo Kösters, assistant to the Kanne management board, explained, initially 50 tons of coffee from organic cultivation in Central and South America and Asia are to be processed in Heede each year – with the help of renewable energies, as envisaged in the settlement concept for the inter-municipal industrial area of Heede and Dersum. The medium-term goal is to roast 250 tons of organic green coffee per year. The Kanne Group, which has been in existence since 1990, is one of the leading German companies for the implementation of gastronomic service concepts in hospitals, retirement homes and shopping centers, among others.

Kösters emphasized the importance of quality, sustainability and transparency in the value chain. In Heede, the organic green coffee is to be roasted in a drum roasting process “in gentle long-term roasting” at 160 to 220 degrees and marketed throughout Germany.

At the same time, investor Hermann Kanne is expanding another young branch of the company, the Italian gastronomy concept “Kannelloni” with pizza, pasta and coffee specialties. A training center for the catering sector is also to be built as part of the roasting plant in Heede.

The project manager for the planned construction of the geothermal power plant, Oliver Kugland from the Hanrath Group in Papenburg, announced that the results of the feasibility study, which received significant financial support from the state to the tune of around 250,000 euros, would be available at the end of February. They should originally have been available before Christmas. Despite the delay, however, Kugland assured that the project is right on schedule. The results of the study will determine whether the ground conditions are suitable for the construction of the planned power plant. All those involved were optimistic about this. The power plant is to pump water at a temperature of 180 degrees from a depth of almost six kilometers and use it to drive turbines for power generation. The planned investment volume for the power plant is more than 48 million euros. However, according to Kugland, the focus of its operation is less on profitability and more on its research character. “We want to become Lower Saxony’s know-how location for renewable energies,” emphasized Kugland. According to him, this also includes the establishment of a university and research location, in particular as an “extended workbench”, so to speak, of the international geothermal center of the Ruhr University Bochum.

“A great opportunity”

The central building is to be officially opened in September. The power plant is due to be completed by 2017. According to Kugland, the aim of the planned reference project is also to counteract reservations about deep geothermal energy and make the topic of renewable energies more acceptable.

Minister Lies was impressed by the progress of the project to date and paid tribute to those involved. The plans for the Green Energy Park are also an opportunity to revive the debate on renewable energies, which in his opinion has recently been increasingly neglected. “We need projects like this, which would never come to fruition without courageous investors,” said Lies. The federal and state governments would then have to create a clear legal framework without prematurely killing off the debate on future prospects. The geothermal project in Heede was a huge step and a great opportunity to bring the advantages of this technology closer to the people. Adventurous discussions and nonsense in this context unfortunately spread much more quickly, said Lies.

District Administrator Reinhard Winter praised the investing company groups as the driving force behind the project, but called for support from the state and federal government for further development

Source: NOZ: Neue Osnabrücher Zeitung