A greener roof tile Benders Sverige

A GREENER ROOF TILE

Family-owned Swedish company Benders Sverige AB is the country’s biggest roof tiles producer. With every aspect of the company positively touched by the family’s passion for responsible achievement, its plan for the future looks exciting. Emma-Jane Batey reports.

Founded in 1960 when Karl-Erik Bender bought his first roof tile machine, Swedish tile manufacturing company Benders Sverige AB is still owned and managed by the Bender family, with son Ove Bender the managing director and Karl-Erik still the chairman of the board. Even though the company has a solid past as a reliable company in the production of good-looking, durable roof tiles, Benders has a policy to ‘seldom look back but to plan for the future’, which has stood it in good stead for the past 50 years.

Vice-president Mats Jakobsson may not have the Benders’ name, but he is clear that all members of the company’s workforce are considered family. He told Industry Europe, “It’s a very family-orientated company, and we all feel part of the same team. There is a positive, mutually supportive atmosphere that encourages us all to do our best, and seeing the founder involved in the day-today operation of the business is inspiring.”

A champion at work

Indeed, Karl-Erik Bender’s inspiration as a company leader also comes from the fact that he is a former sporting champion, with his passion for horses and the sport of trotting almost as strong as his passion for providing high quality roof tiles. The 1973 Swedish winner in horse trotting, also known as harness racing, Karl-Erik bought his first horse at about the same time as his first roof tile machine, leading to a unique parallel that has continued ever since.

Mr Jakobsson explained, “There are now 150 horses owned by the company, and we have continued to have great success with racing and breeding the horses. They are roaming here at our head office, which makes for a very tranquil view! Although breeding horses started out as a hobby for Karl-Erik, it has grown to be a key part of our business.”

Of course, the most famous part of Benders Sverige AB is its high quality, durable roof tiles, paving stones and stone walls, all of which the company designs and manufactures in a range of styles from traditional to modern. Well-known for the exceptional quality of its products, the sophisticated logistics provision supports the product reputation by making sure products are always delivered on time and in top quality.

Mr Jakobsson told Industry Europe how the logistics provision at Benders plays an integral role in the day-to-day operation, and the long-term success of the brand. He said, “We have an environmental focus

across every aspect of the company, and the logistics is no exception. We were actually the first roof tile company to be awarded with the ISO 1400 environmental accreditation back in 1998, and I believe our primarily train-based logistics was important in gaining it – that and our carefully designed state-of-the-art production facility.”

Ecological commitment

Benders is actually working to enhance the environmental responsibility of its logistics even more, with a concerted effort to use trains as much as possible. The current process sees the company with carefully selected third-party logistics partners in each of its active European territories. The company has a number of European manufacturing centres where dedicated trains can take the tiles to the localised trucks, whereby the tiles are then delivered directly to the customers. This allows Benders to be able to deliver to even the remotest areas and islands of Sweden, and even the gardens of some customers to avoid needing to transport the tiles too far.

The ecological focus of Benders will see this logistics provision rely more on trains in the coming months and years, and the logistics subcontractors assigned by the company must also be committed to transporting and delivering the tiles and other products in as sustainable a manner as possible.

The company’s core clients are building materials dealers in each of its main countries, primarily Sweden, Norway, Finland and Germany, with exports to the UK, the Netherlands and the Baltic countries too. Benders is always open to new markets and is constantly assessing the market, particularly in terms of construction trends, in order to ascertain where would be a suitable home for a new manufacturing centre and sales office.

Mr Jakobsson said, “We expect to include both organic expansion and strategic acquisitions in our future growth strategy; we have bought on average one company every year for the past 10 years and we will continue. We always keep the workers of the new companies – including the owners whenever possible – to keep the expertise in-house too. There will also be strong growth in the market, with Finland hard hit in 2010, Norway not seeing hardly any impact of the global economic crisis and Sweden enjoying good stability in general. That said, the construction industry in Sweden is currently half of what it should be, with 100,000 new apartments built annually in Sweden in the 1960s but just a third of that at the moment. Growth in Sweden’s construction industry is predicted, and we are well-positioned to play a strong role in that.” n

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