The company history
Ir. De Jongh
Ir. Gerrit Johan Wilhelm de Jongh in those days working for the national railway company in Haarlem decided to establish a factory for the production of dredging equipment at Oudewater in 1872. We quote a part of Mr. de Jongh’s text dated around 1900:
"It is our sincere intention trying to answer the many questions that people are asking us related to our dredging equipment, the functioning, the power, the dimensions etc. and to show many people not so highly technically educated in our country but who have a direct or indirect interest in the field that can be achieved or improved by dredging, that for almost every particular job an effective and cost efficient dredging machine can be assembled.
We consider it our assignment to design every dredger we manufacture to be suitable for the circumstances in which it will be used. Learning from previously delivered equipment and experiences gained by our highly respected clients has resulted in a constant improvement of components and its details.
The fact that we are at a point in time where we are only at the beginning in our trails for improvement of dredging technology, nobody is more aware of this but ourselves. Although the field we have chosen to invest our technical know-how and efforts, in a country as ours with its many canals, rivers, polders, and its many city’s and community’s surrounded and cut by man made channels, is so enormous and supported by our first efforts that were successfully executed, we still see sufficient possibilities and opportunities to invest the necessary time and effort to reach our goal."
Ir. De Jongh Jr.
Ir. Legemaate
Mr de Jongh’s successor, his youngest son, Ir. Arend de Jongh has lead the company up to half way the 20th century. In 1948 after a short but very intensive engineering study at the Delft University of Technology, Ir J.B. Legemaate joined the company. Under his outstanding and inspiring leadership until 1995 the company grew and flourished, with orders from all over the world.
In 1985 ir. Rogier Vollenbrock joined the company graduated from the Delft University of Technology. Since that time the company has further improved and focus is on standardisation of components and systems. Maximum output, minimum down time and minimum maintenance cost are introduced as boundary conditions for the design of modern, state of the art, dredging equipment. Since 1996 the management of the company is in the hands of Mr Vollenbrock who is supported by a very experienced and committed group of design and production engineers. The company is still solid, financially independent and ready for the expected growth in the European and Far-East markets, where many people are living in delta’s similar or even bigger as in The Netherlands.