‘We started in 1939 in Menen, on the
Belgian-French border, with a small
yard and a hardworking family,’ says
Rik Debaere. ‘Today, Galloo operates
a network of 45 locations across
Belgium, France and the Netherlands,
with 800 employees and an annual
turnover of EUR 600 million. Our core
has always stayed the same: move
forward, dare to invest, and keep
innovating.’
The real turning point came in the
1960s, when Antoine Vandeputte,
son-in-law of Galloo’s founder Joseph
Galloo, joined the company. A trained
agricultural engineer, he brought
fresh insights into what was then
largely a scrap-trading business.
‘He understood sooner than anyone
else that mechanisation and technolo-
gy were the future,’ says Debaere. His
vision was that you had to create
value by processing materials, not just
by trading them. At the time, that
was a completely new approach.
STAYING AHEAD
In the 1970s, Galloo built Belgium’s
second shredder. In the 1980s, it
installed the country’s first flotation
machine. A decade later, the compa-
ny developed technology to process
shredder residue and avoid landfill-
ing. In the 2000s, Galloo Plastics was
A U T H O R Martijn Reintjes P H O T O S Martijn Reintjes, Galloo
Rik Debaere: ‘The metals industry
has to decarbonise and that can
only be achieved by using more
recycled raw materials.’
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