With over 40 years’ experience in internal transport systems and electric vehicles, M-Products is the expert in mobility solutions. Everything is done under own management, from design, producing to delivery. Their flexibility, versatility and innovative approach enable them to provide the best mobility solution for every sector!
M-products is part of Metazet FormFlex and started in the horticulture sector. In this sector they supply automatic and manual systems and vehicles. Since a couple of years, the company is getting more and more recognition outside the horticulture sector. What makes them special is that M-products can offer robust, strong and financially appealing solutions to help companies with the transportation of heavy loads.
Interview with Sven Barendse, Sales Engineer & CAD Engineer at M-products BV.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
Sven Barendse: M-products supplies different sectors within the market, such as the horticulture sector, industry, healthcare and municipality/governments. What exactly do we do in the different markets?
– Horticulture: Pulling heavy plant carts or spraying machines.
– Industry: We are mainly focused on order picking within distribution centers or pulling heavy carts / waste containers.
– Healthcare: We mainly support the logistics departments within this sector. In this sector things can often get hectic with many trucks arriving at the logistics center of the hospital. The personnel there have to sort all the products that come in and bring them to the right department/location of the hospital. For example, the staff brings along linen carts, rolling containers, medicines, mail, etc.
– Municipality/Governments: Our products are being used in transporting waste containers, mail and heavy carts.
E.E: What’s the news about new products?
S.B: We are currently overhauling one of our best-selling products. We see that within larger distribution centers, there is an increasing demand for cheaper solutions to run multiple shifts per day. With our newest version of the Trike 3000, the Trike-3000S, we can make the battery pack interchangeable. This allows companies that want to run multiple shifts per day to buy 1 vehicle with an additional battery pack, so the battery can be changed when it runs out. During the use of the second battery pack, the first battery pack can be charged and you can continue to use our product the whole day around.
Besides the development of the new Trike 3000S, we are working on the latest development for horticulture companies. Within the horticultural sector, the demand for automatically driving vehicles is increasing. We are designing a system within horticultural companies. The first vehicle of our generation that we are working on, is moving automatically from one cultivation path to another.
E.E: What are the ranges of products?
S.B: We have a wide variety of products. In addition to our standard products, we can also devise and produce customer-specific solutions. We produce a wide variety in vehicles that can help with pulling carts, carrying loads, automatic driving systems, working at height and street legal vehicles.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
S.B: We see the market is starting to get bigger and bigger. This is because there is an ever-increasing shortage of personnel and increasingly strict ergonic situations are being demanded for heavy work within companies. Because of this, the market will keep growing and so will the demand. With the future vision we have as a company, we can grow with the market.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
S.B: Connects to what I answered to question 5. Due to the increasingly stringent guidelines from municipalities/governments on safe and ergonomic working, the market will continue to grow. We as a company try to respond to the needs that the market demands of us.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
S.B: More and more companies in this sector are starting to look for solutions in automatically driving vehicles/systems. Companies are betting more and more on vision and how to navigate on that. Of course, this also brings challenges that still need to be bridged.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2023?
S.B: That we continue to develop and grow as a company. We expect our numbers to continue to increase. During last year’s energy crisis, we saw a dip in our numbers, but that’s picking up again. Our expectations for next year are positive.
