KLG EUROPE EXPANDS IN EERSEL

On the way out, they take everything from paint to Christmas baubles, from car tires to machinery. On the way back, the trailer is usually jam-packed with wine and other small shipments that are loaded back from France. KLG Europe has been transporting partial shipments to France and back from Eersel for many years, and is one of the biggest players in the Netherlands in this market. It is going well. So well, in fact, that the company is going to expand significantly.

At the beginning of April, new construction began on a plot along the A67 highway. Anyone driving on the highway towards Eindhoven should look to the left at Duizel. All you can see now is the carcass of the new office and a lot of sand. But that is about to change, says Paul Haverkort – Fleet Manager at KLG Europe.

He stands in front of what should be the main entrance to the new office and he points; “Next to the office, towards the highway, will be a 10,000 square meter crossdock for loading and unloading trucks and combining new routes. In between will be an atrium of glass.”

The office is good for over 150 workplaces. Opposite the main entrance at the far end, there will be a workshop with five work lanes. “Each work lane has space for two trucks. So we will soon be able to work on ten trucks at the same time”, says Haverkort. “In addition, there will be a car wash.”

A large part of the plot will remain undeveloped. Haverkort: “We will make parking spaces there. As a transport company you simply need a lot of parking space.” Even this day, a handful of KLG trailers are parked there. “Our current location is really much too small. We simply do not have enough space, this is due to the significant growth in the recent years. But also the growth strategy for the coming years is one of the motivators for the new building.”

KLG Europe has a total of seventeen branches spread across the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Romania. In total, KLG Europe has over 350 trailers and about 300 trucks. KLG Europe employs a total of approx. 1,300 people.

The head office is in Venlo, but KLG was once founded in Luyksgestel. At the beginning of this century, the Luyksgestel branch was disbanded and moved to the Meerheide industrial estate in Eersel. A location where the company is clearly outgrowing itself now.

The new plot is also a lot larger than the current one. The new building will be made to grow. In the current labor market, finding new personnel is not easy, also for KLG. The transport company is slowly beginning to feel the labor shortage in the driver market, says Yvonne Peeters, Executive Assistant. “We notice that it is getting harder to find the right employees. It is an advantage, that KLG Europe is known as a proper and stable company in this region.”

KLG has its own forest on the side of the plot. A small lake with trees all around, that the company will maintain itself. “The small lake is part of the zoning plan and we have to maintain it”, says Haverkort. “And that is what we want to do. A new construction with an eye to the future for the organization and a nice working environment for the employees.”

KLG also bears the brunt of the overcrowded power grid

The crossdock that KLG Europe is building in Eersel will only have a limited number of solar panels. As far as the transport company is concerned, there should have been far more. “Ideally, we would have covered the entire roof, which would then be 10,000 m2 of solar panels”, says Paul Haverkort of KLG. “But the grid is full and so we are not allowed to deliver power back.”

KLG is thus the brunt of the overcrowded power grid in Brabant. At the beginning of June, the grid operator Tennet announced that the Brabant high-voltage grid was close to its maximum capacity. Tennet and Enexis imposed a stop on all new applications.

KLG is currently increasing the pressure on Enexis and expects to be able to get the right connections in time.

This article is based on the original article of the newspaper Eindhovens Dagblad (article in Dutch).