History

The roots of our company stretch a long way back. In 1892 the Van Duuren company was established by my great-grandfather, Nico van Duuren. A wonderful photo - shown here - that hangs in my office is a reminder of those beginnings.

From our earliest days my brother Jasper and I grew up with transport, as my father Nico van Duuren was the company's managing director for more than 25 years.
In 1980 our family business was the joint founder of NPD, the Nederlandse Pakket Dienst [Netherlands parcels service]. A few years later, in 1983 and 1988 respectively, Van Duuren Districenters Elektronika Expres and Parts Express were set up from within the mother company.
In 1994 there followed a splitting up of the company, which at that time had some 500 employees. Parts Express went further under the leadership of our uncle, Adrie van Duuren, and Jasper and I took over the management of Van Duuren Districenters.

Developments continued, of course, and in the year 2000 we sold the company to GLS, and we joined the board of the Dutch division of GLS. At that time, GLS had 16,000 vehicles on the road in Europe, where the company delivered 1 million packages per day.
But, breeding will out! Of course the Van Duuren brothers are from entrepreneurial stock. And - and I must be honest here - although the period at GLS was exciting, we missed the real entrepreneurship, a place where we could completely unleash our passion for this wonderful business. For this reason, in 2004 we decided to re-form Van Duuren Districenters by means of a management buy-out, Jasper then becoming financial director, and yours truly managing director.

Now, seven years later, I'm happy to say that this was a more than successful step. The company is growing more quickly than we could have imagined, it is in a healthy state and is well on course towards holding a solid position as a pan-European service provider.