They can move mountains in beautiful Maastricht and Janssen Group shows that as the best. We talk to Christian Janssen, one of the owners, about the origins of the company, but also about the plans for the future.
“My grandfather used to have a farm, but it had to make way for the development of an industrial area, so he rolled into earthmoving with his tractor plus front loader. Slowly that went better and more machines were added left and right. In the early 1980s, my father and his brothers joined the business and they have continued to grow steadily. The third generation has now been at the helm for 8 years, three brothers and a cousin. We all entered the business after school. This was not necessarily the intention, but because of the passion and love for the company it turned out that way. The company now consists of 120 employees, but despite the large group we still remain a traditional family business. I am really proud of the group of people we have, says Christian.”
What we like best is large earthmoving. You notice that there are more and more projects that also feature a lot of infrastructure and we can do that too. But our hearts really go out to the big machines and the earthmoving that goes with it. At the moment we have a nice project in Germany in a lignite quarry in Garzweiler. There we are moving 100,000 cubic meters of soil to construct a number of large water buffers with excavators, bulldozers and dumpers. In addition, we are also working near our office in the Beatrixhaven for a regular customer who is going to make a new location there. On this project we make all the groundwork, infrastructure, sewerage, paving for 5.5 hectares and we provide the halls with Stelcon plates, a wonderful project to do. In addition to our traditional diesel excavators, our latest addition, the Doosan DX165W Electric , is also running. Machinist Jan is really very positive about the machine so far. He indicated that the machine is nice and quiet for himself but also for the people outside, he liked it better than the diesel version and that does us very well. It is still exciting to switch to electric, but our first impression is very positive.
We are a company that basically never sells “No”. That is how we are known to our customers; we always want to do and arrange it for them. But I also think that we are also known in the market for our knowledge, expertise and innovation. We like to lead the way. We have always done this, for example with the GPS and the tiltrotators. When that came on the market we were one of the first to get started with this, but we have also taken that step now with the energy transition and sustainability topics, we are heading in that direction! Where you see in the Randstad that this is becoming increasingly mandatory, we don't see this so much in Limburg yet, but we still want to take that step because we think this is important. This is also a reason why we have joined ' De Bouwplaats van Morgen ', an initiative that we have together with seven other entrepreneurs to gather knowledge together with TNO and RVO, but also to share it with the sector in order to achieve an emission-free construction site. .
Without further ado, sustainability is a pillar for us that we will increasingly focus on in the coming years. This is electrification at the moment, but this could also be another energy source that we want to add at a later date. These developments are happening so fast. We also invest in our recycling company. We process a lot of waste and sort it into usable streams. We also have a lot of concrete rubble that comes from road construction projects, which we process so that it can be reused in the concrete industry, so this is high-quality reuse. You can see in the market that raw materials are becoming increasingly scarce. The question for us in this is; how can we work more regionally with raw materials but also be sustainable? There are still many possibilities in recycling and we would like to capitalize on that.
“A while ago I broke my ankle, I would love to be able to walk again,” jokes Christian. But we could well link this to my real good intention, which is to go out more next year, to the projects and the people. Really focus on sustainability for the company itself, but also on the employees. Always, but especially in the current market, it is super important to take good care of your people, that they are happy and that you as a company are also interesting to come and work.”
“Even before the Staadegaard brothers founded Staad, we already bought machines from them, so the connection has been there for a long time. You immediately notice that it is a family business, just like ours. I myself often speak with one of the brothers Sijmen or Pieter and I simply experience that as very pleasant. You don't see that much in our sector anymore. It also inspires confidence to speak to the owners themselves and I have a good connection with them. For us, the contact with the dealer and how they operate is at least as important as the quality of the machine. Every good machine breaks down sometimes, but how that is resolved says everything about the dealer and they do that very well at Staad.”
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