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Industry Spotlight – Rosie Van Walt of Van Walt Ltd.

Once a month, Alucast will sit down with an industry leading driller or distributor to talk about the drilling industry including emerging trends, new technologies, and problems facing the industry as a whole. 

For this week’s Industry Spotlight, we spoke with Rosie van Walt of Van Walt Ltd. Van Walt is a distributor located in the UK, with locations in Spain, New Zealand and South Africa,  Van Walt ltd. are recognized as one of the best and most reliable distributors around the world. 

Today, Rosie Van Walt,  goes over some of the problems facing the drilling industry, an overview of their global operations, and specifically why they are entering the South African market. 

What are some problems you believe the drilling industry is currently facing? 

That’s a good question and easy for me to answer. One of the main things is delayed works. With so many people on most job sites, from different departments, it can really delay the overall time of a job.

To get our equipment onsite, we need the drillers to complete their boreholes before we have access to the sites. A few weeks ago, a site inspection had 16 other people on it. We’re talking about hydrogeologists, ecologists, landowners, regulators, and the works. We get everyone has a job to do, but one small delay and everybody’s job time is thrown off.  It’s a real problem for the drillers. 

 Lead times can be a pain!

Of course, these days, we also have Covid and travel restrictions. But I mean, that’s that’s a little bit too predictable. It’s the way it is, but it’s frustrating to say the least.

And what does your company offer that other distributors might not?

OK, well, that’s pretty easy to answer as well, and that is our superior level of expertise and service.

Our customers pick up the phone and they ask, “I want to know everything about a Data Hub or I want to know everything about your peristaltic pump.” 

The person picking up the phone might not have all the technical answers for them right away, but we will connect them with our technicians or point them in the right direction. And we’ve got some really good guys in the office, who not only understand how our products work, how they are serviced, but also handle our rental equipment/services . 

How does Van Walt Help When Someone Rents a Equipment?

Going back to installations, we don’t just provide the equipment, send it on site and say: 

“Thank you very much”

or

“Good luck with your job. See you later.”

We’re there to hold their hands, and sometimes customers say, “look, guys, we know how the equipment works, we don’t need you to hold our hands, but we’ll offer it anyway and we’ll say, we’re here for you.” If you want us to come on site, we can do that. If you want us to have the video call again?  Let’s go back to it. 

 Can you also Tell Us a bit more about South Africa, why you selected South Africa?

It started by meeting a few people from South Africa at conferences, and learning there was possibly a market for us.  We visited in March and we learned that it’s a water scarce country that relies heavily on groundwater for agricultural, industrial and domestic purposes. Quality data for groundwater is therefore essential to manage the water resources. 

We then did some more research, we then realized that there was a bigger rental opportunity in South Africa than we had realized. We obviously have experience in opening new locations with our New Zealand and Spain office. New Zealand and South Africa are sort of similar environments. And one thing that became clear is nobody rents equipment in South Africa.

So it was maybe a little bit impulsive, but it was a good impulse. Time will tell, but we’re all set up in South Africa and we’ve already made some great connections and built new relationships. 

Exciting Stuff for sure! Is there anything else you want to talk about, anything new and upcoming from Van Walt you want to plug?

Customers absolutely love our Level Scout water logger. The demand for this product has been great, every hydrogeologist has a level logger, not necessarily a Level Scout, but we are working towards changing that.

We’ve gone back to the drawing board, we’ve played around with it, developed it into something more robust/durable , longer battery life and a great warranty.

A big thanks again to Rosie of Van Walt ltd for taking the time to talk about the industry! Keep an eye out on Van Walt ltd in the near future.

To learn more about Van Walt ltd, check out some of their Website and social media platforms.

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