One of our customers, Xella Kalkzandfabriek De Hazelaar, is located in the center of Limburg. The factory is located in the village Koningsbosch, enclosed by the neighbouring country Germany. The brick factory with about 100 employees, is located in the middle of the green, next to the quarry where the necessary sand is being digged up.

The short movie gives a good impression of this special location.

The factory processes a mixture of limestone and sand to elements which are easy to bond in the world of construction. These elements (type of blocks as seen in the picture) are mainly used for interior walls in housing, because they are sound-and fire-resistant. Nowadays there are eight sawmills on the site sawing the elements to the correct size.

John Peeters, head of the technical department, tells the factory runs continuously to handle the need of the construction world. Because of this big necessity it is of course very important that the production of the limestone elements will not stagnate. Machinery must function flawless and meet with the highest quality and safety requirements.

 

How did you get in contact with Budé?

‘You do business with people. It is important to have that special click with each other. As it turns out here again’, replies John Peeters. ‘Loek Meesen of Budé, who lives around here, wanted to visit the factory and meet sometime. According to Loek the specialistic and experienced team of Budé, could be interesting for Xella. We got acquainted and it clicked!

Not long after our first meeting we had an emergency situation with one of the press machines. I approached Loek because our permanent partner could not fix the problem. The machine part was repaired quick and professional inhouse by the Budé team. The beginning of a beautiful cooperation.’

 

In which differentiates Budé itself?

John continues: ‘with a partner, as I said before, it should click,. Having professional knowledge is basic, but you have to have the same drive and value an open and transparent relationship. Say what you do and do what you say. If that is the case, there will be mutual trust and a win-win situation.  And not entirely unimportant; We can always count on a fair and transparent pricing. Loek is my contact person. How he organizes things internally is his responsibility and – fortunately – I am not burdened with that.

Budé is a real machine factory with an engineering department thinking along with us. To give a good example; for a while a poorly functioning sand valve in one of our machines, has caused many failures in the production. Due to insufficient engineering capacity, we could not solve this ourselves. The engineering team of Budé has measured the part and designed an improved version in which our needs were taken into account and the bottlenecks were dissolved. That is quality!’

 

Would you recommend Budé?

John replied firmly ‘Budé is a competent and fine partner, and so a full yes. But whether there is a click between a company and the team of Budé, the company must discover this for itself. I cannot vouch for that.’

Ton the question of what the future brings, John replies ‘as a company we want to meet with the highest safety requirements. That is our most important challenge. We therefore demand high standards from our cooperation partners. We trust that Budé realizes our high expectations.’