Trip down memory lane: customers of the first hour.

DERO once started as a service company, providing services and equipment for other robotic system integrators. In our series of stories about the history of DERO GROEP, this week we tell you more about some of our first customers.

In 1994, Maro Dedel founded DERO after gaining several years of experience with a variety of robot projects. Seeing that robotic system integrators were in need of supplying services and equipment, he capitalized on that. "In the early years of DERO, we were mainly focused on performing maintenance and service and building specific peripheral equipment for robotic systems for our partners," Maro says. "Our very first customers were robot system integrators such as Landré Robotics, RO-matic and Morotech."

Various robot projects at Plukon, MDFoods and Bakkerij Pater.

Sustainable partnerships

Morotech, predecessor of today's Rolan Robotics, was engaged in welding robots and wanted to do more in the field of handling. For this, DERO acted as a knowledge partner and built peripheral equipment for handling applications. Landré Robotics was the company where Maro had started the robot adventure together with Jogchem den Otter, and RO-matic was Jogchem's new company. "For Landré, we mainly built robotic grippers and performed maintenance on robotic systems," Maro looks back. "So we kept visiting familiar relations. And Jogchem continued where we left off at Landré. We completed several projects in Denmark and development and implementation of the first robot cheese handling lines was started, stemming from a project at Cono. Later, bakery projects followed. As DERO, we built robotic grippers and were involved in project installation."

So even after both pioneers left Landré Robotics, the collaboration between Maro and Jogchem remained very strong. Initially on projects for RO-matic, but later more and more on projects under the DERO umbrella. From this partnership, DERO ended up in the cheese processing and bakery industry. Maro: "This is how we built our network of relationships from the very beginning. The great thing is that after 30 years we can still count many relationships from the very beginning among our regular customers."

Robots handle crates of dairy at MDFoods for order picking.

First customers

"Customers like Plukon, where we completed a major automation project in Wezep more than 30 years ago," Maro explains. "At the time, the largest chicken abattoir in the Netherlands. The introduction to the Jaap van de Werfhorst, then project manager at Plukon, later turned out to be of great significance for DERO." Plukon is still a customer, and we still cover the Wezep site, which now produces fresh meals for the retail market.

Another fascinating project was at MDFoods in Denmark, now part of Arla, for automated order picking of crates with dairy products. "Everything about this project was developed completely new for this application," says Maro. "It was a challenging and extensive project in which we took full advantage of the cell control capabilities of the FANUC controller. All peripheral equipment was controlled from this controller and in addition, it was used for data processing at night."

Bakkerij Pater in Avenhorn was also a customer of the first hour. Maro: "After Meyn in Oostzaan decided to expand its activities into the bakery sector, it was our job to supply various robots for tray storage, tin storage, crate storage and crate loading. These were our first steps into the bakery sector." Anno 2025, Pater is still a customer of DERO and several robots are still operational in their production process.

// P. Mulder - Synergy Food  //