Damen Shipyards

The Damen Shipyards Group is doing well. This organisation, with more than thirty operating companies in the Netherlands and abroad, grew this large primarily by building tugs, utility vessels and patrol vessels. Damen’s success has everything to do with the courage to build a large number of ships held in inventory, enabling the company always to serve the customer quickly. For large projects, such as the recent construction of several large patrol vessels, Damen considers Van Leeuwen the designated party.

‘In January 2015, we placed an order with Van Leeuwen for 800 tons of pipes, fittings and flanges destined for the construction of four large patrol vessels,’ relates Jan van den Broek, Manager Procurement Group Offshore & Transport at Damen, in the head office in Gorinchem, the Netherlands. ‘At the end of March a total of 32 containers already had to be shipped to 3 different shipyards that were to build these vessels. For Damen this is the largest order for pipe materials that we ever awarded to a single supplier and the time pressures were high. Van Leeuwen is able to take this on.’

‘Van Leeuwen affixed special order markings to the tens of thousands of components, and the quality certificates were well-organized and easily accessible via their database,’ says Wim Rutten, Senior Purchaser Offshore & Transport at Damen Shipyards Gorinchem. ‘For each batch, the information was supplied to us well-organized in digital format, enabling us to quickly and easily look up the origin of the materials.’ Van den Broek: ‘This is of essential importance to us, because the classification agencies in the shipbuilding sector do not accept any shortcomings in the handling of certificates. If this leaves anything to be desired, the ship simply is not accepted.’

Rutten: ‘Van Leeuwen is a service-oriented company. It is good to see that the company invests in optimal warehouse management by implementing HUM (Handling Unit Management) barcode scanning. When the people involved in sales, as well as those in distribution at Van Leeuwen have a real-time overview of the exact status of a delivery, we are also in a position to better answer the questions of our customers.’ ‘In 2016, we expect to book a series of vessels for a foreign coastguard,’ Van den Broek concludes. ‘Van Leeuwen will most certainly play a role in this as well.’