Jansen and Varoufakis… they’re like THAT
If you don’t know Ralf Jansen, Intergas Head of Marketing and Communications, you’ll know a little more after reading about his not-so-secret wish to wear it like Yanis Varoufakis in his diary entry for 2011! To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Gas Safe magazine Registered Gas Engineer, its editor, Nicki Shearer, asked Ralf to share his diary of a decade with installers, so here’s his abridged version:
2010: We’ve launched our dedicated remote management system for social housing in the Netherlands. It features our RF technology, which is a ‘first’ in this industry, and will revolutionise how boilers are serviced and maintained. More good news, we’ve just started building our new offices in Coevorden (which are half in Germany and half in the Netherlands).
2011: Greece is really suffering economically and, sadly, this is reflected by the phenomenal deals on really great Agean holidays. I’m also wondering whether I should start wearing leather jackets again? Yanis Varoufakis, the Greece finance minister, wears it so well.
2012: Lots of good news… in February we launched our new Kombi Kompakt HReco; it has the highest DHW efficiency in the Dutch market and is the first boiler with an A-label pump. Then we opened our amazing offices in Coevorden and, the icing on the boterkoek was being awarded ‘Beste Tested in the Consumentenbond’, which is like the UK’s Which? Best Buy.
2013: Guess what? Our queen has abdicated, and her son, Prince Willem-Alexander, is now King Willem-Alexander. It wasa great wedding, and we had a day off to celebrate… and we know how to celebrate! More celebrations as we’ve been awarded ‘Beste Tested in the Consumentenbond’ for the second year in a row.
2014: The man from Del Monte, he say ‘yes’. Actually, it’s Stephen Zouch who’s said ‘yes’ to becoming Managing Director of Intergas UK and we are delighted. He has the experience, technical know-how, team-leading ability and a track record of success in taking a business and realising its potential. We’re looking forward to his stewardship of a great boiler brand and the launch of the new generation of smart boilers, namely the Eco RF. With its built-in software the boiler can communicate with the installer/housing provider to head off problems.
2015: Dementia is expected to be the main cause of death for people in the Netherlands by 2040, increasing from 14,000 to 40,000. In the UK data for 2017 shows that dementia has overtaken heart disease as the main cause of death, with 67,641 deaths attributed to dementia. As a manufacturer we can do nothing about those statistics, but we can help organisations improve their duty of care to the more vulnerable through our remote management system; now you can keep watch without being intrusive.
2016: Oh no, the UK have voted ‘leave’. I can’t believe it, no one here can believe it. We manufacture everything in the Netherlands and in Germany for the European market so there are going to be huge cost implications for all of us. But on a personal level I feel a little bewildered, it’s like I’ve got some great friends who’ve just told me they don’t to play anymore, but I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. The good news is that our HRE combi compact boiler has just won Domestic Heating Product of the Year at the H&V News Awards.
2017: Compliance is important in all industries and in H&V it’s crucial, so I’m delighted that Intergas UK has taken the lead and developed MiREG. This is a free boiler registration app – and the only one
where you can register direct with Gas Safe rather than a third party via – and we’re launching it at PHEX this November. MiREG helps heating engineers save time and money, while ensuring compliance, when installing an Intergas boiler.
2018: Intergas is celebrating 10 years in the UK so it seems like a great time to launch our latest boilers too, the Xtreme and Xclusive. They’re good looking and they’re smart, and that’s where the comparison with me ends. The Xtreme also comes fitted with a passive flue gas heat recovery system making it extremely (get it?) energy efficient, but there’s more… both boilers have the lowest NOx emissions of any domestic boiler on the planet. That’s definitely worth celebrating!
2019: We’ve just had a great group of editors come to visit our head office and factory in Coevorden. I don’t think they believed me when I said the head office was designed to look like our two-in-one heat exchanger… they do now. It’s been an exciting start to the year, and I’m looking forward to the reaction to some of our great new initiatives, like the new Intergas servicing hours protocol.
