Fire-silience

Author: Harm Custers – Head of Marketing at Takii Europe B.V.

Tuesday 19 October was a black day for Takii Europe. A major fire has destroyed our branch in Sint Annaland (NL). Fortunately, no one was injured, but the facility’s property and (seed) inventory were utterly destroyed.

In no time, everything was on fire. The fire brigade was quickly on-site and spent a long time extinguishing the fire. A ruin afterwards; unbelievable how quickly a fire can spread and with what power and heat! It has a lot of impact, especially on our colleagues on site. Suddenly there is no longer a trusted, safe workplace, and many valuable possessions are lost—a feeling of helplessness, sadness and worry.

Fortunately, from all sides, people sympathize with our colleagues in Zeeland and other locations, supporting us all to cope with this situation. We experience great involvement and solidarity among our staff. Again we are showing our ability to recover from stress and hardship! Ambitious as we are: the facilities in Sint Annaland will be rebuilt. Agreements with our production partners continue, and we are working on solutions where shortages have arisen. Fortunately, our head office in De Kwakel can continue to operate at full capacity, and we can largely deliver all orders to our customers.

After COVID-19, our organizational resilience is once again called upon. On the ability to adapt to sudden major changes and possibly come out stronger. Resilience has now become a strategic condition for companies to operate successfully in a dynamic world. Not only being able to ‘rebound’, but even being able to grow.

The great thing is that, as a team, we are the basis of this ‘corporate’ resilience. Vitality and mentality go hand-in-hand. As a colleague fittingly stated: “together we put our shoulders to the wheel and work on recovery!”