Struyk Verwo Aqua
With its years of experience and market knowledge, drainage product manufacturer Struyk Verwo Aqua is proud to be a valuable partner to its clients
Total solution provider
With its years of experience and market knowledge, drainage product manufacturer Struyk Verwo Aqua is proud to be a valuable partner to its clients
Struyk Verwo Aqua is a leading specialist in drainage and water treatment. The company offers a wide range of concrete cast iron products for drainage applications, including gutters, soil and well covers, and its brands AQUAWAY and AQUAGATE are well known in the industry for their innovation and reliability.
As Mark Baetsen, Operations Director, explained, the company started life as a family-owned concern, which was sold around the turn of the millennium. This marked a change of focus, with the business moving away from the manufacture of pipes and cornerstones, and really targeting its range of drainage products, such as channels, gullies and covers. “In 2007, we constructed and moved into a new plant ten kilometres from the old one and then another change happened very recently, when this year we were sold to a Dutch investor,” he began.
“This will give us the opportunity to grow further and acquire other companies ourselves, who are working in the drainage area. We’ve also purchased 11,000 square metres of land next to our company that we are now developing in order to expand our production.”
Initially this new space will increase the gully and cover production, and as Mark noted, it could be only the start of Struyk Verwo Aqua’s facility expansion: “There is another option for 20,000 square metres of land that we have at the moment but it does require the change of status from agriculture to industrial, and that process can take a couple of years. But we do want more space as we have plans to expand our other product areas as well.”
As a leading manufacturer and supplier of both traditional and innovative concrete and cast iron products for drainage, Struyk Verwo Aqua is involved in some of the most diverse infrastructure and industrial projects in the Netherlands. Its drainage products and (prefabricated) custom solutions are of very high concrete and/or cast iron quality, comply with European directives and can be used in both indoor and outdoor applications in sectors such as agriculture, airports, industrial, logistics, public transport, recreation, roads and waterworks, seaports, and utilities building. “Our main customers are contractors, and in terms of significant recent projects we’ve done a few airports, with Amsterdam Airport in 2017 and Rotterdam Airport in 2016/2017 and Brussels Expo in 2017. On the Amsterdam contract, we produced six kilometres of channel for them, and for Rotterdam we made special high resistance channels with gratings.”
He continued with some details on why customers come to Struyk Verwo Aqua for their drainage products: “I think our new, efficient factory makes us competitive on costs and prices. We also very much focus on operational excellence, and we have several programmes running here that are designed to make our production processes operate more efficiently. We have a very flexible engineering department, which is also very inventive when it comes to finding solutions to our customers’ problems. We keep the lines of communication short between engineering and production so we can act quite fast and keep flexible, and we have a technical department where some staff are available to work quickly if a change needs to be made to a mould for example – we would be able to react to that sort of request very promptly.”
Another area that sets Struyk Verwo Aqua apart is its green approach. Many of its products are available in standard, middle or premium options, and the premium versions include some more environmentally-friendly materials, as Mark explained: “So for example with a concrete product we include reused material that has been crushed,and we also recycle some plastic materials to reuse as well. More and more clients are requesting this, especially on government contracts for cities, who ask if we can fulfil their need to use parts that are environmentally-friendly.”
Struyk Verwo Aqua has seen a lot of recent changes, and as the acquisition process matures and the company grows even stronger, Mark can see that there will be more improvements on the agenda. “We can reduce costs further, both in our own processes and on the prices of the end products. We can continue to improve efficiency and going forward we see lots of opportunities as the demand for better water management increases. There is a huge market for drainage and filtration and we foresee that the coming years will be very active.”
He concluded with some details on the development of some products that will be a focus for Struyk Verwo Aqua in the future: “We already produce oil and grease separators in our factory in Belgium but our sales department has been changed so we are going to focus on a total concept that we can deliver for water treatment,” he said. “We can now deliver an entire concept, which includes channels, gullies, oil separators and infiltration to help our customers. In the future we want to be seen as a company that delivers a total solution, not just the parts.”
Struyk Verwo Aqua BV
Services: Leading specialist in drainage and water treatment