If Marc wants to go right, Peter first wishes to examine the route map. Does Peter want to rethink an idea and discuss the pros and cons? Then Marc is already convinced. “It has been going so well all these years, because we think in different ways”, Peter tells. “Marc is rather impulsive, while I am more of a calculating type. This combination has proved to be successful.”

Peter Donkers heads the internationally active Voets & Donkers Cooling Technology and Air Conditioning together with Marc Voets. Do you want to know what bus line 156 has to do with Peter’s career? And what the people at Voets & Donkers have in common with a team top athletes? Read on now.

“My career started in the eighties, on the bus from Schijndel to Eindhoven”, Peter commences. “I was studying chemical process technology at the TU and on the way to school I got infatuated with Ciske Voets, Marc’s cousin, who was to become my wife. Via Ciske and her father Jan, I became familiar with the then Gebr. Voets company, where I took a side job as an assistant mechanic. A bit later, Jan and Ad gave up the company. Ad’s son Marc was interested in taking it over and was looking for an associate. Guess who was to become just that”, Peter laughs. “I was 24, saw the business potential and being managed by two young lads, the company was renamed Voets & Donkers Koeltechniek. Privately, Ciske and I developed a family with four children. Over the years, Marc and I developed the company from 7 to 50 employees.”

“Soon we would travel the world. At the time, when the cd-industry was still booming, we would produce clean air units for CD production machines. Meanwhile, 80% of our business is done in the Netherlands, the remaining 20% takes place elsewhere around the world”, Peter explains. “We manufacture advanced air conditioning and cooling installations for the food industry, agriculture and pharmacy. We, for instance, constructed all the cheese maturing installations that are used by dairy companies in the Netherlands. Also in Ireland and even on Tasmania, where they produce ‘European cheese’, we have manufactured this installation. In Sweden we supplied heat pump systems for a new processing plant for lettuce and for Nigeria Breweries, we saw to cleanroom installations. Despite my poor English, I am fairly well able to realise sales far abroad!”

“Can we not just make something simple?”, some of our staff sigh every now and then. But in the end also they do realise that we have reached this position by not always taking the easy way. We are a Schijndel club, while often, our competitors are multinationals. Every day is a match and we will not win by ‘just playing’. We must stand out day after day! As we started, we used to wonder ‘what if we could compete with the major players’. Years later, we can proudly state that we are indeed able to do that. Outside the region we are better known that in our own Schijndel, which was an instant reason for us to sponsor football club WEC. Also close to home, there are plenty of opportunities!”

Source: schijndelsnetwerk.nl/voets-donkers-koeltechniek/
Text: Femke Hellings