The Green Evolution

The ‘green hype’ has produced a number of responsible products in the past couple of years. But long before that, in the late 1900s there was the revolving door: green whether it liked it or not. The Dutch ‘mini-multinational’ Royal Boon Edam was a pioneer in 1903 and is now the world market leader. Chairman Niels Huber (39) comments on corporate responsibility as a marketing trick and taking a look at the entire supply chain:

Photo copyright © 2010 Sprout magazine What’s so green about a revolving door?
"The concept of the revolving door is ‘always open, always closed’. There is no direct link between the outside and inside environments, no draught and therefore no variations in the inside temperature, which consequently means energy saving. That concept is not widely known. If you ask people: Why would you choose a hole in the façade of your building over a revolving door, they look at you strangely."

How much energy can you save?
"That depends on a number of variables, mainly on the size of the door and the room behind it. In a small lobby with few visitors the energy savings won’t run into the hundreds of kilowatts. But in a hospital with a high ceiling where the hot air can rise considerably and a large lobby with numerous hallways... You won’t believe how much draught comes through an open sliding or normal door. If you install a revolving door there, you can save thousands of Euros a year."

What was the breakthrough for Boon Edam?
"The oil crisis in the seventies helped us to become number one in Holland. Oil became expensive with numerous motor-less Sundays. Suddenly everyone was concerned with saving energy. At that time the government implemented a number of state aided programmes, allowing businesses investing in energy savings to benefit from fiscal advantages."

How quickly did the company grow?
"Our average turnover growth is about 10% a year. You won’t see us making jumps of 30 or 40%. Of course you do see those kinds of numbers in companies that launch a completely new concept onto the market, or with companies that have taken over others. But a revolving door is not a new concept and we don’t engage in many take-overs. Those we do engage in are usually small; distributors that become subsidiaries. We often compare our growth to climbing the Chinese wall: it’s simple really; each step is only a few centimetres high. You ask yourself every time; will I take five at once or just one? We take just one at a time. That doesn’t seem like much but when you look back after five minutes, you’ll see you’ve conquered quite a height already. And it’s a manageable height. Sure, you can take leaps of five steps at a time, but after three of those leaps, you’ll need a minute to recover. You have to be able to manage in terms of direction if you grow explosively."

Four years ago, durability and being green came high on the agenda again, thanks to Al Gore’s ‘An inconvenient truth’. Have you been able to ride this green wave as well?
"Yes, of course. We’re a commercial business. But at some point, everything starts being linked to responsible business."

You sound annoyed
"Yes. It’s just a shame that in the early nineties we campaigned for years with the slogan: ‘stop draughts, save energy’. Back then we were one of only a few that drew attention to it. Nowadays everyone talks green and durable. I think drawing attention to the environment is great, but it should be serious."

And you have your doubts...
"Often it’s just a marketing trick. Make your product green and people will think it’s better for the environment. But in many instances that isn’t the case. Many products sold today may be greener than ever, but their manufacturing and recycling processes are much more damaging to the environment. Look at cars for example. If you look at the entire supply chain, from raw materials to waste, they are still no better for the environment."

What about the manufacturing and recycling processes of your revolving doors?
"There are still enough improvements that can be made. Our product saves energy; that is one thing. The next step is how to make our production process cleaner. Can we implement a different drive or different raw materials? We put in LED lights nowadays, these use less energy and are therefore less damaging. We also use a lot of aluminium for the door frames. The disadvantage of that is that it requires a lot of energy to produce; on the other hand it has the advantage that a good recycling system is in place. Our waste goes directly back to the supplier to be melted and used in a next batch. And then there are the small things: less paper waste, less travel and more teleconferencing. It all helps. Where it ends I don’t know yet, but we’ve started the movement."

So it could be much greener?
"Yes, but I think we need to take a look at the entire supply chain, look at the materials we use. What if the aluminium guys develop a new type of aluminium with better insulation properties, then we can apply that. The same goes for glass, the weather strips that are around the door wings and more economical drives. But for that we are largely dependent on the developments at our suppliers. We strive to reduce our environmental impact by 10% every year."

Completely cradle to cradle, is that achievable?
"I don’t see that happening. Cradle to cradle means recycling your product 100%. There are so many parts to a revolving door, it’s just impossible. Becoming green is an evolutionary process that involves everything: from production to transport and installation."

Now you mention transport: you got your start in the company on a truck as well.
"Yes, I’d always wanted to drive one of those things. And I thought I’d better do it at the start of my career than take a sabbatical when I’m forty and then drive one."

Where did the dream come from?
"I have no idea. Why is a certain colour your favourite? You can’t explain it. I’m drawn to trucks, the larger the better. I loved driving one, the independence and responsibility. I’m not someone who needs to be among people all the time. After having travelled through the whole of Western Europe for four years, I’d pretty much had enough, though. At that point I was done. I wanted to get on within Boon Edam."

You’re the third generation Huber at the helm. Was your succession planned from the start?
"I wasn’t raised with the idea; this is your future. The opposite even, there were only two of us at home and it was common knowledge that my sister – younger than me but with a fairly big mouth – wanted to get on in the company. She was my father’s right hand. I was the quiet one, you didn’t really hear from me that much. However I did plan to reach the top position in Boon Edam. My sister and I were going to do it together. The outside world didn’t know, but I didn’t care. We knew."

It worked out differently...
"She died when she was 24, in a car crash. I was 22. At that point I asked my parents: tell me what you want me to do; do you want me to come in and help? I spent about nine more months driving that truck. After that I did a number of things, from production to warehouse, and I climbed to a management position."

Still you got the chairman’s desk at a fairly young age. Quicker than you planned?
"Yes, that happened quite unexpectedly. In 2001, while travelling to our Swedish subsidiary, my father had two strokes within 24 hours. Due to a blood clot in his blood vessels his brain temporarily didn’t get enough oxygen. He was immediately out for the count. The company regulations stated that the chairman’s position would always be filled by a family member. I was president of one of the subsidiaries; that position was then passed to someone else."

What is the biggest change the company went through since you became chairman?
"We grew from a Dutch company with extensive exports to a ‘mini-multinational’. We have people all around the world, with local management everywhere. And you will see our doors wherever you go. That’s what I’m most proud of: that I run into Boon Edam doors abroad. Not literally of course. I once was on holiday in Turkey and after many delays I finally arrived at my hotel at 4 in the morning. When I went through that Boon Edam door it made my day. It felt like coming home. I love to see that we make things possible that other companies can’t. That we, the small company that we are, are granted the order to produce the doors on the Burj Kalifa in Dubai, at 422m high, the highest installed revolving doors in the world... That we can achieve that, with just a few people, is amazing."

You still consider yourself to be a small player, although Boon Edam is world market leader. Dutch sobriety or false modesty?
"We are still a small company compared to our competitors Dorma, Kaba, Gunnebo, Besam. Those are the big guys, multinationals, mainly public companies with thousands of employees and turnovers in the billions. We are far from that, but we are world champion when it comes to revolving doors."

Energy generating revolving door

The idea of a energy generating revolving door had been around for a long time. As early as the nineties Boon Edam dissembled electrical bikes to study the mechanics of their drives and the electromotor in a secret R&D basement. When architect Thomas Rau contacted the Edam company in 2007 about a revolving door that used the pushing power of people to generate energy, they worked out a concrete product. Rau’s nature café La Porte – the new station buffet in Driebergen-Zeist (Holland) got the world premiere. TNT postal agency put in an order as well, for their new main office in Hoofddorp. The office, the first in a range of green offices, is supposed to be the greenest building in Holland when it’s delivered. The manual revolving door stores the generated energy in batteries that are used to power the LED lighting in the door’s ceiling. The energy generated is minimal for now. Developing a door that yields more energy, is difficult. Niels Huber: "It’s a law of nature that you can’t take out more energy than you put into it. We could make the door turn very heavily, but then you’d need real muscles to use it. Although that fits the trend of providing more exercise for your employees, it isn’t very customer friendly."

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See Boon Edam’s 3-minute movie on Revolving Door products.