Partnership with Reinette & Co

The UNamur has an important fruit heritage at the Haugimont Estate. This heritage, soon to be a century old, is a wonderful example of the association between Man, Animal and Plant for decades. This grazed orchard ecosystem is an ancient agro-ecological model that responds to many future environmental, societal and climatic challenges. As such, it must be preserved, redeveloped, enhanced and used as a laboratory for life, production and awareness. A partnership with reinette & Co has been set up to achieve these objectives.

Given the size of this heritage (11ha!), it is not always easy for a university and its managers to monitor the various tasks on an annual basis, to optimise production and to ensure that the greatest number of people benefit from it.

At the same time, Reinette & Co is a cooperative created to bring together different actors of the high-stem orchard in Wallonia who are dedicated to the production and valorisation of 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 associating with different cooperative partners.

The exchanges between the Haugimont Estate and the Reinette & Co cooperative show that there are good synergies and converging interests between the two parties.

The agreement specifies how fruit from the Haugimont  Estate will be made available to the Reinette & Co cooperative in exchange for management services (harvesting, processing, pruning, planting) and animation with the partners (visits, training, events).

UNamur will make available a part of the Big Orchard, enabling Reinette & Co to have a minimum quantity of fruit estimated in order to achieve a certain efficiency of service to be valued in the framework of the present partnership.