20 years of Vuyk Engineering Groningen BV

Recently the VEG staff had a little celebration on the occasion of the 20st birthday celebration. In the late 80s Centraal Staal realised they had to modernize, innovated and expand to keep up with the growing demand of the maritime industry. Started as an integrated drawing office, it developed into a new branch office called ‘Transport Efficiency’. Unfortunately the formulae of this initial company was not successful and only lasted for short while. Officially Vuyk Engineering Groningen BV started 20 years ago on the 22nd of October 1990 as ECG, better known as Engineering Center Groningen, as a divestiture of Centraal Staal (CS). Mr. Andries Staal and Mr Guus van der Bles at that time were Managing Director and Deputy Managing Director respectively. It had 13 employees and was located in the bicycle shed – or at least, where the bicycle sheds are located now – in a few container style barracks. Obviously this was far from luxurious and the space was easily filled up with the enormous A0 drawing boards we used in those days. A number of employees from the early days who still work at VEG, have rueful memories of drawing by hand on tracing paper, erasing errors or changes with a surgical blade when updating until the paper was completely worn through. At the start of ECG, the Naval Architects department consisted of only one man: Klaus Asmus, who did all the calculations single handed; the Mechanical department only consisted of two men: Willem Visscher and Minne van der Valk (who, at a later stage, became the company managing director for a period). Initially clients were found at the shipyards in the Northern part of The Netherlands and of course in Centraal Staal. Four years later, around 1994, the task of developing Product Information (PI) for the metal cutting machinery was moved from CS to ECG. About the same time ECG merged with Vuyk (Capelle aan den IJssel) and the name was changed to Vuyk Engineering Groningen BV (VEG) with a sister company VER (Vuyk Engineering Rotterdam) in the southern part of The Netherlands. The following year a new office was built at an industrial site on the outskirts of Groningen; the location where VEG (and several other companies of the Central Industry Group) remains to this day on the first and second floors. As the reputation and stature of Vuyk Engineering Groningen became more and more established, the company expanded and a new department was added: O&R (‘Design and Calculations’, better known as ‘Ontwerp en Rekenen’). Early in the 21st century VEG established a pilot office in Romania, however it soon became apparent that the Dutch quality and knowledge level, required for this demanding market, can only be realised by concentrating the work back in The Netherlands, in one central location by Dutch craftsmen and specialists. The Romania office was sold off in 2003 and the the Rotterdam office was sold 2008 to IHC as a result all activities of Vuyk Engineering Groningen were concentrated in the office at the Osloweg 110 in Groningen. After a succession of productive managerships, Jack Kuin (Managing Director) and Maarten Sickler (Deputy Managing Director) are now successfully leading the company, which consists of approximately 45 employees. VEG is steering a course toward innovation, even higher quality and diversification. In addition to the vast knowledge that VEG have of all types of (commercial) vessels they are now investing more effort in three exciting niche markets, those being Mega yacht Engineering, Dredging/Offshore and Architectural/Art structures. Despite the recent global economic downturn and its much heralded recovery, not only are Vuyk Engineering Groningen standing strong but they are eagerly anticipating the next 20 years, or more.