West Flemish young entrepreneurs often have a lot in common. Their passion to grow their business, for example, and the inherent challenges, such as finding the right people and continuing to innovate. We brought CEO Alexander of AQUALEX together with Charles Valcke of Valcke Prefab Beton and Traconord.
Alexander Vanlerberghe, CEO of AQUALEX, and Charles Valcke, CEO of Valcke Prefab Beton and French sister company Traconord, know each other for more than six years. They first met through business association Voka. "Only a few months after we met, I discovered that - without actually realising it - we had had an AQUALEX appliance in our company for years," Charles laughs. "That was one of our very first models, from the early days of the company," Alexander remembers.
In the following years, Charles had additional appliances installed. The offices in his site in Ypres are fully supplied with tap water. And he also owns an AQUALEX tap at home. "The trigger to switch completely to tap water was that I didn't want to make my pregnant wife lug around bottled water. I was also shocked by the amount of plastic waste we were producing. Not sustainable at all!" For the Traconord new building in Steenvoorde, France, he again opted for AQUALEX appliances. "It's very cool to work with entrepreneurs you know well," Alexander believes.
Similarities
Apart from that customer-supplier relationship, there are of course similarities. Privately, for example, as Charles and Alexander are both young entrepreneurs. They were together for several years members of the board of Jong Voka West-Vlaanderen and both are committed to the local chapter of the Ronde Tafel. " We obviously also share our West Flemish mentality, as well as our style and approach," Charles believes. "And another resemblance: we both want to learn a lot and gain inspiration from fellow entrepreneurs."
They also see quite a few parallels between their businesses. "Our companies are both operating in the extensive construction sector," Alexander explains. “13 years ago, AQUALEX started with a focus on marketing and sales, but in recent years we have been increasingly investing in R&D and in-house production, something Valcke had been doing for a long time. Scale-wise, we are of course at a totally different level. And Valcke is a fourth-generation family business, AQUALEX is only in its first generation," Alexander laughs.
Sustainability as a hot topic
For both AQUALEX and Valcke, sustainability is a hot topic. "We notice this trend among many of our customers: they are focusing on it more than before in their strategy. With our solutions, we are already assisting them to take a step in the right direction. We have now pooled all our efforts in a sustainability report, where readers can also instantly calculate how much CO2, plastic waste and energy they save by choosing AQUALEX systems. We also notice this greater focus on sustainable business among job applicants; they are much more concerned about this topic than, let’s say, 10 years ago," Alexander says.
When it comes to sustainability, the construction sector suffers from a somewhat negative image. "The construction sector does indeed generate CO2 emissions, but completely CO2-neutral construction is not yet possible," says Charles. "With Valcke and Traconord, we are working very strongly on that. We take a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, we reduce our CO2 emissions, and on the other hand, we offer our customers the option of offsetting their emissions. Sustainability goes beyond CO2 emissions, obviously. We ourselves provided solar panels, charging stations and energy balancing systems on and around our premises. Throughout the factory, our lighting system was upgraded to LED lights. We also invested in water treatment plants and a large water basin."
He goes on: "Concrete sometimes has a poor reputation because it is made with cement, which is a major source of CO2 emissions. But the industry is innovating a lot, for example with new factories capturing CO2. It is sometimes overlooked that concrete also possesses very sustainable characteristics. It is produced locally, is circular and is thermally inert, so a concrete building retains heat longer. It has a longer lifespan than a steel or timber structure, plus concrete allows for building in height. In a nutshell: all elements turning concrete buildings into sustainable buildings that have a long lifespan, and are therefore quite sustainable," he concludes.