Palletiser being built: "We only sell machines that we dare to sleep under"

"A customer in Finland had built a second layer house, he now has to stack seven pallets of eggs a day. Our palletiser saves him a lot of time, but also his back. If I were a farmer I would choose a palletiser rather than a new Mercedes. They are also less expensive, haha."

Michiel Bloemhof is Project Manager of the new Prinzen Palletiser, he is proud that Prinzen has delivered another robust machine. Especially when customers agree: "This Finnish farmer called it a 'clever machine', I saw him enthusiastically telling others about it. But all the palletisers we have put in the field have been received enthusiastically. For me, that's fun, of course."=

How was the palletiser project handled?

"The palletiser is the first project of which I am the Project Manager. We had a clear plan: the palletiser had to deliver exactly what farmers need. For example, we built it in a way that saves the farmer a lot of movements. We really started from the customer's point of view."

"The palletiser is also the first machine that we build and test modularly, which provides speed and lower costs, also for the customer. We have our own components and software and our own way of working, it has become a real Prinzen machine. As it should be, in my view."

The quality is important?

"Every palletiser we deliver is tested, and we make sure we always have a working machine in the field to test all the signals and sensors. This is how we guarantee quality. We have a prototype at a customer in Limburg that we learn a lot from. He is very happy with it and even thinks about a second one.

"Prinzen is known for solid machines, and that's again the case with this machine. With Prinzen's values and standards we can put the machine on the market with confidence. There's a saying here: 'You have to dare to sleep under the machine yourself, only then can you sell it'. Customers sometimes have to walk under it in their situation, the machine then goes into park mode for a while."

How did you like doing the project?

"It's my first project at Prinzen, I've learned a lot from it. It's a very practical machine, the challenge was to make it as simple as possible. People who see it say 'did this take us so long?' But for a designer, that's the best compliment you can get."

"I like working at Prinzen, we want to make good products that the customer is happy with. We're just a very practical company, our machines just have to work all the time. I personally like that approach."