Produces shock indicators for freight transport
ShockWatch Europe
Produces shock indicators for freight transport
ShockWatch Europe B.V.
Peter van Buren started the company ShockWatch Europe BV in 2012. The name ShockWatch sometimes leads to confusion. In contrast to what a lot of people think, the name has nothing to do with watches. “We watch shocks,” according to Van Buren. They are simple indicators up to extensive recorders which can be shipped with your freight. They collect time, location, temperature, humidity, tilting and impacts along the way. Tracing back damage during transport becomes very easy this way and the presence of the indicators automatically leads to more careful transport and thus prevention of damage. From a cost perspective, accuracy during transport is much more effective than strengthening the packaging.
First foreign ShockWatch
The American ShockWatch Inc. (in September 2017 renamed to SpotSee, Inc.) was looking for an experienced person for their first office abroad to serve as a contact point for local customers and distributors and to get more market share. Van Buren was asked to set up the European, African and Middle East office because he already worked with the products since 1991. Since the start the company experiences a lot of growth, EMEA revenues of ShockWatch have almost tripled during the past five years.
Van Buren tells us a lot of special transports were equipped with ShockWatch’s products. “We are involved in about every fragile transport. We discover a lot of things for our clients this way. This way we discovered that about 50% of all transport damage in Western Europe is actually not transport-damage, but caused after delivery and then attributed to the transport.”
A shipment of potato-chips constantly arrived crumbled. Our product pointed out the problem was caused by a certain filling-team. A beer transport to Africa constantly arrived damaged; we demonstrated the problem was a stop in Spain (while the transport was booked as non-stop) during which the containers were loaded onto the docks too roughly. But televisions, paintings, vaccines or big transformers are monitored using ShockWatch’s products just as well.
New product SpotBot
Recently a new product was introduced: the SpotBot. This low-cost product displays real-time shocks, temperatures and actual position, even from closed spaces. Data is sent to the cloud through SIM (worldwide coverage). Van Buren expects to realize more growth on top of the yearly sales of 2,5 million indicators and recorders.
