Vetus says it’s going to build a new waterfront and headquarters in the same neighbourhood of Schiedam, where the company’s founder Willem den Ouden started the business from his home nearly 60 years ago.

The plans for the new 9,500m² facility are said to encourage collaboration and creativity within the office space as well as increase the warehouse space to double the current capacity. Plus, the location will offer better facilities to showcase products and conduct in-water tests with dedicated mooring spaces for demo boats. This comes as part of the company’s growth strategy to cater for the evolving needs of Vetus customers.

“After 50 years of Vetus being housed in the Fokkerstraat in Schiedam, it’s exciting to be moving into this impressive HQ in 2024, which will also be our 60th anniversary year,” says Marcel Borsboom, CEO. “This light, bright, modern facility has been designed with the latest thinking on maximising staff wellbeing and effective collaboration, which will make Vetus much more attractive as an employer, and it places us in what is fast becoming a marine cluster.

“In recent years, several plots on Havenstraat have been (re)developed into high-quality office buildings and various light-industrial business units, mainly aimed at the maritime industry. Commercial marine companies such as Palfinger, Jumbo Maritime, Wärtsilä and Boluda Towage are already located here,” adds Borsboom.

The new warehouse will be equipped with automated storage and retrieval systems and have a significantly greater pallet capacity than in the current warehouse. The company says it’ll help to store, process, and ship its products in a much more efficient way. The building will feature a rooftop solar panel array, generating much of its own energy, and will rely on heat pumps. This means the building will be almost energy neutral.

This move is part of Vetus’ wider and long-term strategy for growth and development, which has seen the increase of its global presence through the opening of new branch offices, as well as multiple regional team expansions. These have been driven by the positive and significant increase in sales. Sales for fiscal year 2022 will end on an unprecedented high, the company says, and have in total increased to over 40 per cent since 2019.

Earlier this year, Vetus launched a new range of three air-cooled propulsion systems at boot Düsseldorf, saying its latest innovation in electric motors ‘brings the many benefits of electric propulsion to a wider range of boats and navigation areas’.

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