The partnership with Voets Installaties – Merridale’s approved distributor for Netherlands and Belgium, continues to flourish. Voets provides an all-round capability for the construction, refurbishment and service support of fuelling installations for retail and commercial operations.
“We are doing good business whilst other companies specialising in facilities infrastructure are suffering from the consequences of the economic crisis,” reports operations director, Eric Janssen. “However transport logistics are crucial to the economy and trucks still need to be refuelled.”
“Fuel management is now seen as an essential tool and the fleet operators are always interested in new developments in the software for generating stock usage reports. So even in difficult times, the smart operators are happy to update their depot equipment to remain competitive.”
“Of course we are all under pressure to manage costs and everybody is becoming more price sensitive, but we believe that the customer service and back up support offered by Voets Installaties are recognised as key differentiators. We aim to build long term working relationships with our clients and as long as this is backed up by good quality equipment, we know that we have the resilience to meet every new challenge.”
Eric Janssen continues: “In our home market across the Netherlands, there are six companies offering similar facilities services and some are much larger than we are. As a smaller company we have advantages because we are more flexible, we have less bureaucracy, shorter lines of communications and a better understanding of our customers’ operational requirements.
And with Merridale support we are also innovative. For instance we have had some success with our ‘special’ dual-speed pump. This allows operators to select either a high speed delivery rate for large capacity truck tanks or a standard flow rate more suitable for cars and vans.
During 2012 we have secured some valuable contracts in the public transportation sector. In the Netherlands, contracts for bus services are placed against regional concessions which are put up for tender for a certain amount of years. As concessions are awarded, there are opportunities to bid for new or upgraded infrastructure equipment such as fuelling facilities.
Currently Voets is providing Merridale twin pumps to a number of installations for the Arriva group, which has gained a considerable amount of new concessions in 2012. This work is expected to continue in 2013 as there are additional opportunities to bid for fuelling upgrades.