Steve Jordan visits Voerman in the Netherlands, to take a look at the company’s new, purpose-built building, and explore its nine-year journey to get there.
I have been in this business now for over 50 years. I have seen a few warehouses in my time, in countries all over the world, ranging from the squalid to the pristine. But, with perhaps one or two exceptions, all have been compromises, usually adapted from other buildings or fashioned from standard rectangular boxes.
Then I heard that Voerman had built a new place in The Hague in the Netherlands. I had seen the old place which was viewed as state-of-the-art only 25 years ago. My first thought was why? Why move again? Then I got to wondering. If you have the opportunity of building a new office and warehouse complex for a moving company, without the usual restrictions, without compromise, what would it look like?
How would it feel? In what way would it make work and business easier?
I had to find out.
So I hopped on Eurostar. Danny van der Meer, who runs United Logistics Services International (ULSI), a company in the Voerman network that specialises in logistics, picked me up from the station in his extraordinarily impressive electric BMW. Turned out most of the cars used by the Voerman management are electric nowadays. As we approached the gleaming white building I was struck by its huge, curved window walls and the company sign: Voerman: A Worldwide Welcome. Danny pulled the car into its designated space, under the elevated offices, protected from the already hot sun of a mid-summer morning.
After a quick chat with Wiebe van Bockel, Chief Commercial Officer, and a brief introduction to some of the staff, including Pauline Collins, with whom I worked back in our Trans Euro days, I was handed over to
Manon Hekel, Marketing Specialist, as my chaperone for the day.
Manon and Nick Voerman, CEO Robert Voerman’s son, showed me around.
I was instantly struck by the abundance of space and light. All the offices are on the first floor, set in an arc around the curved building, all with floor-ceiling windows overlooking the car park and full glass walls to the interior. Nick explained that the company always had an open-door policy, but this took it a few stages further. There was no hiding place and nobody, it appeared, wanted to hide. There were even portal windows into the warehouse. There were also two industry firsts for me ...
Photos:
Top: Robert Voerman.
Bottom: Voerman's new building in The Hague in the Netherlands.