TWENTY THREE

Twenty Three has its roots in Belgium having begun under the leadership of CEO Kristof Soreyn and CTO Andy Demeulenaere in 2017. Their first facility to manufacture support structures for LED screens was opened in China in 2019, with now roughly 150 employees. A factory in Belgium opened in 2021 and a factory in Nashville, Tennessee will begin operating later this year.

“At the start, we had a core of nine or 10 members of the team with one office in China and one in Belgium,” Martin stated. “As the company began to grow, we decided to manufacture the products ourselves in 2019. The factory in China is our largest facility. It is 100,000 sq ft and we are in the process of doubling that space.”

The need to increase the space is so they can manufacture almost all aspects of their work under one roof, and not rely on too many external factors.

“We mostly work with raw materials, and are not dependent on having pieces made,” said Martin. “We get our aluminium base and we machine and manufacture it through our system, so we’re not dependent and other manufacturers.

“We have 50 room-sized five-axis CNC machines, which create frames in one movement. We are expanding that facility to also work with carbon fibre, so very specific machines that we previously had to outsource are now coming in house.”

Operations such as water jetting, tube CNCing, powder coating and assembly are done in the European factory, and also in the factory opening in the United States.

“Since the pandemic, there has been a big boom in virtual production stages; these are fixed installs that stay set up for up to eight years,” said Martin. “We have produced some large structures for screens at Thrilith Studios in Atlanta. A whole team of our engineers and CAD designers completed a 30ft by 207ft structure holding 2268 BP2 v2 ROE Visual LED tiles, which were stacked to achieve no gap along the floor.” Other projects have also been completed for production studios in Melbourne and Berlin.

“It was always a part of our business plan to have a base in the United States – we just needed to wait until we grew enough to make this investment,” said Martin. “A lot of our clients are in the United States. At present, further locations are not on the table, but if the need comes then we could be open to it.

“Twenty Three is not a giant company, and in many ways we don’t want to be,” continued Martin. “We also make the cabinet frames for a lot of the leading LED manufacturers; when they get approached to provide screens for projects – they sell us as a supplier for extra structures and support. We do not intend to go to end users directly, but instead build through partnerships – either through a rental company, or a company putting together a fixed installation project. We are totally independent, and work for everybody that needs our services.”

When it came to expanding in the United States, the Twenty Three management had to choose between Las Vegas and Nashville, eventually opting for the latter.

“Nashville was favoured because it is more centrally located with good access to the major highways,” said Martin. “There is also a big entertainment industry presence in the city, and a lot of the production companies that put together tours have an office there.”

This new facility is roughly 35,000 sq ft and will be operational in June 2023 with around 10 members of staff employed in full-time roles

“When we are involved in larger projects that require more staff, we employ people on a temporary basis to increase productivity,” explained Martin. “And this is also the case in both our Belgium and China locations.” www.twentythree.be