The heavy duty
steel of Feijen Service Centre.
At Feijen Service Centre Maastricht it’s all about heavy gauge. They produce heavy duty steel plates. Customers make heavy duty vehicles out of these plates, like trailers and agricultural machines.
Feijen Service Centre is known for manufacturing thick steel plates. They work with coils with a thickness of 6 to 25 millimeters. These plates can be 2,5 meters long. These high numbers in thickness and size is what makes this business unique, according to Stig Eriksen, General Manager. Besides trailers and agricultural machines customers also use the plates for ‘yellow goods’ (earth-moving machines and cranes). Feijen Service Centre’s steel is also to be found in shipbuilding.
Pretty much all the steel processed at Feijen Service Centre is coming from IJmuiden. Sister company Tata Steel processes it in coils and ships it to Maastricht. The customer delivery is by truck and partly by boat. Or multimodal; first by truck and then by train. Europe is Feijen Service Centre’s trading area. Their business partners are located all around Germany, Benelux, United Kingdom and Scandinavia.
Read all about our staff members’ experiences!
Feijen Service Centre specializes in the so called special differentiated products. “They’re top notch”, thus Eriksen. The plates are customized to fit the clients wants and needs in order to fit their machines perfectly. Eriksen is aware of the fact that they need good craftsmanship and knowledge in order to live up to their customers expectations. The cheaper companies, from Russia and Turkey among others, can’t compete with the quality his company delivers. “Safety, quality and volume. That’s what it’s all about with us”.
Our staff is a mix of young and old members
It takes well trained people to live up to the high expectations customers have. But there’s definitely no abundance of logistic employees, operators and maintenance technicians. That’s why Feijen Service Centre trains its own people, Suzanne Waterval explained, Manager HR/QHSE. For this, they collaborate with intermediate vocational schools in the area. “Even though people already know that our staff operates machines and it’s not a dirty job, still not enough young people choose a career in technology.”
The workforce (125 employees plus flexible staff members) consists of a healthy mix of young and older people. At Feijen Service Centre they love to work with creative and flexible people. Interns and graduates are welcome, regardless their level in school.
The business is part of Tata Steel, one of the largest steel manufacturers in Europe. It combines the size of the company perfectly with the smaller size of the factory in Maastricht, according to Eriksen. “The good thing about Tata Steel is that one can fall back on specialisms. It is an international company with the informal atmosphere of a small one.
You should be prepared for the future
The good thing about Tata Steel is that a theme like sustainability is high on their agenda. That’s why they recycle constantly (15-25 percent of every new load of steel consists of scraps),including steel packing material. All companies belonging to the concern benefit from this.
Eriksen and the rest of the company are working on the introduction of high strength steel (HSS) around Maastricht. Another priority is digitising. Electronic data exchange for example. This is used to exchange information between customers and suppliers which would make emails and paper mail superfluous. Eriksen: “We already took the first steps in the process, but E-commerce is in its infancy in our branche. But still, we’re working hard on it because we want to be future proof”./span>
Feijen Service Centre
Fregatweg 42
6222 NZ Maastricht
T: +31 (0)43 - 368 84 44