Prospact and Kuijpers join forces on major FrieslandCampina project

For a large-scale software project at FrieslandCampina in Veghel, Prospact’s Process Translators are working closely with engineers from Kuijpers. A joint team of around ten software engineers is working on the modifications required to prepare the plant for processing a new raw material from 2027 onwards.

Senior Software Engineer Yannick Luitjens is closely involved in the project on behalf of Prospact.

A strong team

“FrieslandCampina made it clear early on: for this project, we need the best and strongest team possible. A real dream team,” says Yannick. “The project is large, the schedule is ambitious and there is a huge amount of technical work to be done. That is why we decided to join forces with Kuijpers.”

The Veghel plant is one of FrieslandCampina’s larger production sites. Among other products, it produces milk powders and semi-finished products for the business-to-business market.

Preparations for the project already started in 2025. Yannick was involved on behalf of Prospact at an early stage, helping to determine the technical scope of the work.

“At that stage, I contributed in an advisory role and helped assess what would be required,” he explains. “Which software needs to be modified? How much capacity will we need? And how do we set up the project properly from a technical perspective? That means Prospact has effectively been involved from the very start.”

To prepare the plant for the new raw material, various parts of the production process are being modified. This also involves a significant amount of work in the field of industrial automation.

For the execution phase, engineers from Prospact and Kuijpers are working together as one integrated project team. In total, around ten to eleven programmers are working on the project on a daily basis. Within FrieslandCampina, this large-scale programme is known as Project Pearl.

“We are all working towards the same goal. On a project of this scale, you need a great deal of technical expertise as well as sufficient capacity. By working together, we are able to bring both together.”

Yannick has a leading technical role within the project on behalf of Prospact. As Senior Software Engineer, he coordinates the work, safeguards the technical direction and acts as a key point of contact and responsible lead within the project.

“Of course, you are still working on the technical side yourself, but a project of this size involves much more than that. You need to make sure all the different parts ultimately fit together properly.”

Prospact has also made a number of preparations internally to support the project. This includes investments in a new hosting platform and additional server capacity, enabling the team to build a large-scale virtual test environment at the office.

“You can basically think of it as a virtual factory,” Yannick explains. “It allows the entire team to develop and test the software before it is actually deployed at the plant. This helps us work in a controlled way and thoroughly verify in advance that everything functions safely and correctly.”

The technical scope is substantial. The project involves seven PCS 7 DCS systems and more than twenty PLCs.

The first milestone was reached on 9 September. FrieslandCampina visited the Prospact office in Boxtel to test the first part of the software that had been developed. And successfully so.

“That part of the software has now been tested and approved,” says Yannick. “It can now actually be deployed in the plant. That is obviously a great milestone in a project of this scale.”

Over the coming period, the joint team will continue working intensively on the project. For Prospact, it brings together many of the things that define this type of work: technical depth, scale, collaboration and involvement from preparation through to implementation.

“A huge amount needs to happen within a relatively short timeframe,” Yannick concludes. “That is exactly why it is so valuable to be able to tackle this with such a large and strong team.”

We are grateful to FrieslandCampina for the trust placed in us on this special project and look forward to continuing this technical challenge together with Kuijpers in the period ahead.