Page 37: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (April 2022)

TECH FEATURE GEARS TECH FEATURE GEARS “At Reintjes we also want to ride the wave of decarbonization, and currently, 80% of the inquiries we get from our customers – shipyards and owners – are regarding hybrid.” – Klaus Deleroi, Managing

Director, Reintjes

Photo courtesy Reintjes ner and distributor, Karl Senner LLC in New Orleans (which

Reintjes needs no introduction to this audi- houses a) healthy stock (of products and parts).We are glad ence, but can you give us a ‘by the numbers’ to have such a partner with all the necessary parts in stock. look at the company today?

Looking worldwide, we have some supply issues with

Thanks, Greg, for this opportunity. A rough ‘by the num- bers’ ... today we are around 500 people, 400 here in Hameln raw material, which is increasing with this current Russia/ with 100 around the world, manufacturing about 750 gears Ukraine crisis.

which translates into a turnover of $20 million.

When we met at your factory in Germany

Obviously the last two years have been de? ned seven years ago, you said, “A weakness is the by COVID. Can you give us an overview of how organization structure, which is focused too much on production and product related. We

Reintjes has navigated these challenging times?

have to open our business to become more

Luckily COVID has not really impacted Reintjes (signi? - ? exible and to adapt to customer needs, even cantly). The worst challenge was the travel restrictions for on a per order basis.” My question to you: have our sales people and our service technicians. One silver lin- you achieved this transformation? ing was a boost to Reintjes’ in digitalization, particularly to

I underestimated the change in the organization, because hold meetings. We always had the tools, but the mentality it’s not the organization structure, it’s the mentality of the was not there. people. To change the mentality, to be more customer driven, to understand what the customer really wants, is a really big

Another challenge, particularly here in the U.S., challenge. This is made more dif? cult (today) with the chal- has been the supply chain snarls. Can you give lenge to ? nd and retain our people. We have to be more ? ex- an overview of how these supply chain issues ible and more customer attentive, and I would say we’re about have impacted Reintjes?

a third of the way there.

Focusing on the U.S. market, we have a very good part- www.marinelink.com 37

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