C-DRONE GUIDE · 25 AUGUST 2026
Drone and Industrial Vegetable Processing Plant: ICPE Heading 2220, Stockpile Volume and Prices
During peak season, the intake yard of a vegetable-processing or canning plant disappears under skips and bulk bags of green beans, peas or carrots, delivered at a pace the site's weighbridge can barely keep up with. Alongside it, a cooking-and-canning workshop running day and night, a freezing tunnel fed by an ammonia refrigeration plant, and a roof saturated with process humidity that nobody climbs willingly at the height of the season. Here is what the drone documents on this kind of site — raw stockpile volume, roof condition, refrigeration plant — and the prices.
Published on 25 August 2026, reviewed on 26 August 2026 — regulations in force as of August 2026.
Vegetable processing, canning, freezing plants: the scope of ICPE heading 2220
A vegetable-processing plant that sorts, washes and prepares fresh vegetables for distribution, a cannery that sterilises them in tins or jars (appertisation), or a workshop that freezes them in a tunnel all fall in France under the same regulatory family : ICPE heading 2220, which covers the preparation or conservation of plant-based food products by cooking, heat sterilisation, freezing, freeze-drying, dehydration, roasting and fermentation, and which explicitly includes fruit and vegetable ripening workshops. The heading excludes, however, three sectors classified elsewhere : sugar, starch and malt, as well as oils and animal feed.
The applicable regime is set by the quantity of incoming products, assessed on the year's busiest day — a criterion tailored to as seasonal an activity as canning green beans or peas, where nearly the whole year's tonnage is concentrated into a few weeks of campaign. A plant processing between 2 and 10 tonnes a day falls under declaration, governed by the order of 17 June 2005 ; beyond 10 tonnes a day, it moves to registration, governed by the order of 14 December 2013. It is precisely these campaign peaks that the site's weighbridge measures and that the drone comes to document in imagery.
Intake yard: measuring raw vegetable stockpile volume by photogrammetry
At the height of the campaign, a vegetable-processing plant's intake yard is organised into windrows or pallets of bins, sometimes loose piles on the ground for certain root vegetables delivered in bulk. Counting skips or pallets by eye from the ground gives a rough order of magnitude ; a drone photogrammetric survey, on the other hand, produces a 3D model of the stockpile and calculates its volume with a precision that far exceeds visual estimation. This method, developed and validated for aggregate stockpiles in quarries — see our guide to drone stockpile volume measurement —, transposes directly to a pile of raw vegetables at an intake yard.
A study by M. H. Rohizan and co-authors, published in 2021 in IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, compared quarry stockpile volume measured by drone photogrammetry against a conventional method, finding a gap of only 2.5 % between the two approaches (see the study on Google Scholar). The weighbridge remains, and must remain, the regulatory reference for the quantity of incoming product that sets the ICPE regime ; drone volume measurement adds a complementary visual and volumetric inventory — useful for running a campaign day by day, documenting a stockpile for an insurance declaration, or settling a disputed stock rotation with a supplier.
Workshop roof, cooking-canning line and freezing refrigeration plant: what an overflight documents
A vegetable-processing plant's production building often combines, under one roof, a washing-peeling area, a cooking-canning line with its autoclaves, and, for sites that freeze produce, a freezing tunnel connected to an ammonia refrigeration plant and its roof-mounted cooling towers — a layout close to the one detailed in our guide to inspecting an industrial dairy plant. The roof takes the same hygrometric beating : condensation from washing and cooking steam, corrosion accelerated by a humid and sometimes chlorinated atmosphere (line disinfection), standing-water points around duct penetrations and cooling towers.
This thermal reading of the building envelope draws on a technique already documented in the scientific literature and already cited in our dairy-plant guide : a study by Ortiz-Sanz and co-authors, published in 2019 in Remote Sensing, compared a drone-mounted thermal camera against a fixed mast-mounted camera for detecting thermal bridges, air infiltration and rising damp on a building envelope, finding comparable detection performance with a far shorter coverage time for the drone (see the study on Google Scholar). On the refrigeration plant itself, the thermal pass spots abnormal icing or an overheating rooftop compressor, a visible symptom for the refrigeration contractor to check ; it never detects a refrigerant gas leak, which is the job of the fixed detectors required by regulation.
Wash-water treatment ponds, method and prices
Water used to wash raw vegetables — soil, plant debris, suspended organic matter — often flows into one or more treatment ponds before discharge or reuse, sized to absorb the organic-load peak of full campaign. As with a sugar beet factory, whose settling ponds face a comparable strain during campaign, a periodic photogrammetric survey of the ponds shows silting and the actually available useful volume, without anyone working at the water's edge.
The mission runs half a day, ideally scheduled during the campaign for a representative stockpile measurement : a briefing with the production or QHSE manager, truck traffic at the intake yard, areas where autoclave steam can reduce visibility, a take-off point set clear of traffic lanes. As with any mission on an industrial site, the prevention plan is settled before the flight. Always check the zone on Géoportail before any quote, and require the contractor to hold up-to-date professional liability insurance.
2026 prices (excl. VAT) : €400 to €800 for a one-off stockpile measurement at the intake yard ; €900 to €1,800 for a full campaign combining stockpile volume, an orthophoto and a thermal pass of the roof and refrigeration plant ; €250 to €500 per visit for recurring monitoring during the campaign (several weekly measurements) ; €300 to €600 for a standalone treatment-pond survey. A travel charge applies beyond a 30 to 50 km radius. Request a quote stating the campaign's pace, the roof area and the goal (inventory, regulatory file or fire/refrigeration prevention).
Frequently asked questions
Does drone imagery replace the weighbridge for determining the ICPE regime under heading 2220?
No. The regime — declaration or registration — is set by the quantity of incoming product weighed on the weighbridge, a regulatory metrology device whose reading is the operator's responsibility. Drone volume measurement produces a volumetric estimate of the stockpile visible at the intake yard, useful for running a campaign or for an inventory, but it never substitutes for the regulatory weighing.
Is drone volume measurement accurate enough for an end-of-campaign inventory?
On a well-formed pile accessible from every angle, the gap measured in the scientific literature between drone volume measurement and a conventional method stays in the range of a few percent. Accuracy drops, however, on a stockpile that is partly covered (tarpaulin, shed), unevenly compacted or mixed with empty pallets : the result remains a reliable order of magnitude for a management inventory, not a contractual weighing.
Does the thermal camera detect a refrigerant gas leak on the ammonia refrigeration plant?
No. It reads a surface temperature — abnormal icing on a pipe, a hot spot on a rooftop compressor — which can be the visible symptom of a fault, but it measures no gas concentration in the air at all. Detecting an ammonia leak is exclusively the job of the fixed detectors required by ICPE regulation on this type of installation.