Over the course of two months, three buildings have been completed, fitted out and equipped in Utrecht, Holland and Boom, Belgium to house all but two of the group's 14 separate companies including the head office of the parent company, Ampco Flashlight Holding.
The final piece of the jigsaw was put in place when lighting rental company Flashlight Rental moved into the massive 15,000 square metre (162,000 square foot) Rental and Technology building at Proostwetering 50, on a new industrial park outside the centre of Utrecht.
In the same building are the group's other Dutch rental company Ampco Pro Rent, research and manufacturing companies Team Projects, XLNT Advanced Technologies and Xilver, and the group's management company Ampco Flashlight Holding.
The building includes 5,000 square metres (54,000 square feet) of management administration and sales offices, demonstration suites, and 10,000 square metres (108,000 square feet) of warehousing, logistics and service. It also features a huge demo room measuring 14 by 25 metres, with a 10m high ceiling enabling full production rigging, and 12 loading docks with two massive cargo lifts.
The adjacent 3,000 square metre (32,0000 square foot) building, at Krommewetering 133, which opened in March, houses the group's sales and distribution companies, TM Audio, Lightco and Pixlvision.
The two buildings, which replace a collection of much older units, were planned in-house by a team headed by former CEO of the AF Group, Eric de Bruyn, while the new building in Boom was largely designed by CCO Karel de Piere. The Krommewetering building was designed by renowned Amsterdam-based architects Cepezed, the firm responsible for Porsche's striking HQ in Stuttgart, Germany. They look out across the wide open, tree-fringed acres of the city's fresh water reservoirs.Lighting rental company Metam @ All and rigging specialists Rigging Box moved into their own shared offices, also in Utrecht, a year ago.
In north-west Belgium, 30 km north of Brussels, the move to the new 5,000 square metre (54,000 square foot) unit at Boom was also completed in March and houses both rental company Flashlight/APR and sales and distribution companies Ampco Belgium and Candela. The Rental department covers some 3500 sqm and sales department 1500 sqm of which they share Technical services, the academy facilities, 220 sqm demo room and the Inhouse Brasserie.
The two divisions are linked by a unique upper-level outdoor Sky Deck running around the building, and its official opening will be celebrated with an Open Day on May 23.
Flashlight's move came perilously close to disaster, when fire broke out in the offices of another company on the floor above the unit they were leaving. Luckily, Flashlight's critical equipment and files had already been packed away, saving it from serious damage. The centrepiece of the move itself was a massive military-style logistics operation in which a fleet of 38 trucks moved the entire rental stock to the new building in a single evening.
"Everyone, including our IT people, did a superb job," commented facility manager Marc Boere, the man in charge of the operation. "By the time the offices were open for business on Monday morning the complete infrastructure was ready to go - it was a plug and play setup, with virtually no disruption to business."
Ampco Flashlight Holding CMO Fred Heuves said: "As the individual companies and the group as a whole have grown we've had a tremendous need for more space, and we could see huge efficiency and creative benefits by working in the same location. Now almost everybody
