From Farm to Frozen Vegetables: A Century at Den Dubbelen 3

The site at Den Dubbelen 3 has been in continuous use since 1936. That's not marketing language — it's simply true, and in the context of industrial real estate, it's unusual.

Most business complexes have a build date. This one has a history.

The farm

The Ploegmakers family started working this land in 1936. The site was agricultural from the beginning — parsley, white asparagus, onions, red fruit, and the kind of mixed farming that was common in Noord-Brabant at the time. Horses and cattle were part of the operation. The land was worked properly, not speculatively held.

That matters because it shaped the character of what came later. The buildings that went up on this site were built by people who intended to stay. Solid construction, practical layout, structures sized for real work rather than minimum viable footprint. The agricultural roots are still visible in the farmhouse that stands on the site today — the original family building, still intact.

The factory

In the mid-1960s, the operation shifted. The Ploegmakers family moved into food processing, establishing a frozen vegetable factory on the same ground. For roughly four decades, the factory ran — processing, packaging, distributing. It served both regional customers and export markets. It was not a glamorous business. It was a functional one, and it ran for a long time.

The factory closed on 31 December 2010. By that point, it had been operating for the better part of half a century — an unglamorous, productive span that left behind something more valuable than most industrial operations do: a set of well-built structures with serious bones.

Ceiling heights that accommodate real equipment. A footprint large enough to subdivide meaningfully. Construction from an era before cost-cutting became standard practice in industrial building. The factory was gone, but what it had been built inside was still very much there.

The decision

When the factory closed, the family faced a choice that property owners in this position often face: clear the site and redevelop, or work with what exists.

They chose to work with what existed. In 2011, the first tenants moved into Ploegmakers Park.

That decision was not purely sentimental, though the family's connection to this ground runs deep. It was practical. The buildings were structurally sound. The location — two to three minutes from the A50, equidistant between Eindhoven and 's-Hertogenbosch — was as useful for business tenants as it had been for a factory with regional and export distribution. The infrastructure that made the factory viable made the complex viable too.

What changed was the use. What stayed the same was the address, the family, and the commitment to running something real on this ground.

The complex today

Ploegmakers Park now covers 14,000 m² of warehouse and office space, occupied by a range of independent businesses. The warehouse units run to 6.25 metres ceiling height — a direct inheritance from the factory era, when the buildings were sized for industrial operations rather than light storage. Office units start from 50 m², housed within the same complex.

The old factory structure is still the backbone of the site. The farmhouse is still standing. The new generation of the Ploegmakers family now manages the complex, on the same ground the family has worked since 1936.

That continuity is not something that gets built into a business park — it either exists or it doesn't. At Den Dubbelen 3, it exists because the same family made a series of decisions over nearly a century that kept this place in active, productive use rather than selling, clearing, or walking away.

For businesses looking to rent in the Veghel area, that context is worth understanding. You're not signing a lease with a fund or a developer who acquired this site two years ago. You're renting from a family that has been accountable to this address since before the Second World War — and intends to remain so.

We'd love to show you around. Get in touch.