Market leader in commercial flooring prefers to be involved from A to Z

Who says Van Berlo, says industrial floors. That the Benelux market leader has more products and services in house is less well known. As far as commercial director Glenn Verhoef is concerned, that is about to change.

Van Berlo is particularly active in the construction of logistics centers. For example, the distribution centers of bol.com, Jumbo, Lidl and Zalando bear the signature of this Veghel family business. It was founded over forty years ago by Harrie van Berlo, as a one-man business, with the laying of industrial floors as its main activity. In 2003, by which time the company had expanded quite a bit, an in-house engineering department was set up on the initiative of son Marcel. "This made us much more flexible," explains commercial director Glenn Verhoef. "Until then, we were working with external engineering firms and if there was a design change from a client, we couldn't switch as quickly as we wanted. Thanks to that department, which now consists of four structural engineers and six draftsmen, we can give more direction to our own designs and ideas."

Rotterdam Polymer Hub's distribution center comprises a total floor area of 45,590 m².

Under the fluorescent lamp

You could see the establishment of the engineering department as the start of a new approach, in which Van Berlo worked more and more toward offering a total picture to the customer: not just the floor, but also the (precast) system foundation, foundation techniques and its engineering. "We started offering the system foundations in 2004 because of the growing demand for them. A few years later, in 2008, we moved. The reason was the desire for more space so that we could make and store concrete elements for our projects 'under the fluorescent light,' as we always say. Now we can work and plan as weather independent as possible."

239,000 posts in 2019

At about the same time, Van Berlo Funderingstechnieken was founded, specializing in the design and production of the Mini Vibro pile. These concrete foundation piles are poured into the ground. "We put a cover on the bed and vibrate it with an eighteen-centimeter diameter tube into the ground, up to 25 meters deep if necessary. Then we pull the tube out of the ground and fill the hole with concrete." This happens at lightning speed: "On average, we do about 250 per day. In 2019, we poured 239,000 piles. The more you go west of the Netherlands, the greater the demand for floor piles becomes."

20 percent growth per year

In 2009, sons Marcel and Frank took over the company from their father. There are now 110 permanent employees at Van Berlo. In addition, the company cooperates with another 170 to 190 externals on a daily basis. The family business is achieving resounding results. Since 2015, it has been growing 20 to 25 percent annually. In 2019, Van Berlo poured 2.6 million m² of floors across 220 projects. It also did thirty system foundation projects. "We are booking record after record. I don't see that decreasing either, since we have been pouring ten floors a day for about three years. We now have four piling rigs to pour the Mini Vibro piles and this year we will take the fifth one into service."

The floor was realized in 24 phases during which Van Berlo used the superscreed machine, among others.

Recruiting in Latvia

Finding enough manpower for all those projects, is quite difficult. "It's hard to get skilled and well-trained personnel, especially since there isn't really any training for making a monolith floor." That's why Van Berlo hired a company instructor to train people internally. "This is done using learning modules that we have created based on our experience, knowledge and expertise. The training we offer people is very broad: from dimensioning and setting the corner lines to actually pouring the concrete and finishing it monolithically. In addition, last year we recruited people in Latvia. Unemployment among men between the ages of 25 and 30 is high there, so they are willing to come to the Netherlands. Another advantage of Latvians is that they speak English well and have a good basic education. We have now recruited and trained eighteen people and they now form two independently operating landfill teams."

Optimize

Since its founding in 1979, Van Berlo has grown into a market leader that can completely unburden clients. "That starts with our own engineering department. Because we are at the table from the start of a project and can think along in the design phase, we can realize optimizations by looking for the best solution: a lighter foundation construction on which the floor does not bear down or, on the contrary, a heavier one on which the floor does bear down." That provides benefits in time (four times faster than conventional techniques) and money. "That's music to our customers' ears."