Anton & Frank
From trust long felt
to a conveyor belt
since 1993
‘JUST AS DOWN TO EARTH AS WE ARE’
The success of 100 years of Legro can be attributed to many aspects. Not least of those are our suppliers. And just as we do with our staff and customers, at Legro we value long-term working relationships and partnerships with our suppliers. By investing in each other and building mutual respect, both parties can be successful. A good example of this is Legro’s decades-long relationship with Konings Transportbanden.
EVERYTHING IN HOUSE
Konings Transportbanden has been manufacturing and supplying conveyor belts and accessories for more than 30 years. Every day, around twenty experienced staff work on designing, manufacturing and installing products that are used in agriculture and industry all over the world. Everything from engineering to assembly takes place in house at the Konings factory in the Kanaaldijk industrial park in Nederweert. Operations director Frank Stultiens and commercial manager Anton Teunissen, who is in charge of costings and sales, are only too proud of their achievements.
FIGURING OUT EVERYTHING FOR THEMSELVES
Anton has had an association with Konings for 33 years, having started out as a technician with its sister company Konings Aandrijftechniek. Anton: “I still remember very well that after a few years we decided to start making conveyor belts for industrial use ourselves instead of buying them in. We started off very small in a self-built 100-square-metre hall. Here the foundation was laid for Konings Transportbanden. I handled sales, costings and assembly – everything, really, and we also had to figure out everything for ourselves. You could do that back then. After just a year and a half we moved to a new, 600-square-metre facility. And we needed to, as we were growing fast and needed overhead cranes to move the conveyor belt frames around. Until then we had been doing that manually. That would be inconceivable today!”
LOOKING FOR PARTS
In the early days of Konings Transportbanden, and indeed well beforehand at Konings Aandrijftechniek, too, there was a lot of contact between Konings and Legro, particularly in the person of Sjef Swinkels. Anton: “Sjef regularly called in on us when he was looking for parts for repairs to his machines. When he saw that we made conveyor belts, he ordered two straight away. Our second and third ever conveyor belts were therefore for Legro. This laid the foundation for what developed into a highly fruitful collaboration between Konings and Legro. Our company grew steadily, we discovered new markets and after three years we relocated to Weert. We started out there with 1,000 square metres of production space and added another 1,000 a year later. Now we have a superb production facility totalling 4,000 square metres in Nederweert.”
LESS TALKING, MORE DOING
With the growth of Konings Transportbanden, the workforce was also significantly expanded. They now have a team of around twenty experienced professionals under the inspiring leadership of CEO Erik Konings and operations director and co-owner Frank Stultiens. Frank: “I started out at Konings as a Saturday production worker and seven years ago I joined the business office. I loved it and felt completely at home here. So when the current owner Erik Konings asked me about three years ago to take a share in the company with a view to eventually partially taking it over, I didn’t think twice. As operational director, I deal with a variety of issues, including corporate strategy, operations and sales support. No two days are ever the same for me. One of our main strengths is that our lines of communication are short. So just like they do at Legro, we follow the motto ‘less talking, more doing’.”
GERMANY AND LATVIA
Although Anton and Frank are well-known faces at Legro, the other people at Konings also have good ties with the company. Frank: “That’s perfectly natural, too, given the longstanding relationship there has been between the two companies. Our people know very well what Legro needs and how things work there. Not only in Helmond and Asten but also in places like Germany and Latvia. We have also worked with a team to supply our conveyor belts, star screens and loading bunkers in those countries too. It is always a challenge to design, supply and install a suitable solution at very different locations.
MADE TO FIT ON SITE
According to Anton, the growth of Konings Transportbanden is primarily down to the changes in the market. Anton: “In the past, everything was less complex. We made conveyor belts for Legro and made them fit on site. These days, projects are more complex, and the engineering has to be fully thought out in advance. At the moment we are working with about twenty construction variants in different widths. That is much more than in the past and requires a professional approach. Luckily, we have a great team of experts that enables us to deliver all enquiries successfully. Including Legro’s! For me, the great thing is that we can still see belts running there that we made more than twenty years ago. That says it all, really!”
SOLID FOUNDATION
The foundation for the successful working relationship between Konings and Legro is mainly the fact that their people have the same mentality, Anton and Frank say. “We are simply there for each other no matter what. We speak the same language, we are very open and approachable and we generally take decisions fast. We can rely on each other and we use each other’s knowledge and qualities at every level. That makes for a very solid foundation, for the future too as far as we’re concerned!”
