On Wednesday, a milestone was celebrated at onion sorting and packing station Gebr. Boone from Oostdijk. The oldest palletiser from Verbruggen Palletizing Solutions, now with twenty years of service, had reached the milestone of 20 million bags processed. Reason for Rutger Verbruggen to travel to Zeeland with cake and crate of Westmalle beer.
"We've had a great partnership with the Boone family for years, first my father Alex did business with Foort and now, as a representative of the second generation, I'm responsible. Of course, we are both family businesses and that clicks," says Rutger Verbruggen. Foort Boone agrees: "In those twenty years, we have never thought about another machine. Although the palletisers are quite modernised nowadays, you know everything about the machine!"
"We have never had any problems with the machine. It's an old machine now, but it still functions fine. You get to know your machine well over the years, of course, and you have to give it a service from time to time, but we've never really had any trouble with it in all these years. The advantage with those old machines is that there is little fuss. In that sense it is a simple machine, but so am I," laughs the onion packer.
"Machine for the chores"
Three Verbruggen palletisers are now running at Gebr. Boone. The latest machines have since been significantly modernised on both appearance and 'under the bonnet'. "The other two machines run 25 kg bags continuously. With this machine, we mainly run the 5, 10 and 15 kilos. It is a machine for chores, but it runs whole days and never lets us down. So I do expect that we will be able to continue with this palletiser for a few more years."
"This machine is not the most modern, but it can certainly last a few more years," agrees Rutger. "Before then, the palletiser was really revolutionary. A lot has changed in twenty years and the latest machines can stack a lot faster and also look a lot nicer, but we still have quite a few machines of this generation running in the country. It's like a car, if you take good care of it, you can do with it for a long time."
"We are extremely busy at the moment. Demand for onions comes from numerous countries, so we can run plenty with the machine," Foort says. Whether the machine will make it to the next anniversary remains to be seen. This cake went down well with the Gebr. Boone staff. "And, of course, I am happy to sell Foort a machine to stack the crates of Westmalle," Rutger concludes with a laugh.
For more information:
Foort Boone
Boone brothers
Lavendeldijk 3a
4415 AJ Oostdijk
Tel: 0113-501270
[email protected]
www.gebr boone.nl 
Rutger Verbruggen
Verbruggen Palletizing Solutions
+31 527 62 02 32
[email protected]
www.verbruggen-palletizing.com