"With Soltis, you don't just buy a product, you buy a solution".
Eurover is a Belgian company founded in 1999 and based in Tubize. The company quickly established itself as a benchmark in glass processing. After calling on us in 2013 for a photovoltaic installation, Eurover has once again placed its trust in Soltis in 2020 as part of its transition to LEDs. We had the opportunity to interview Dimitri Zaharakis, CEO and owner of Eurover, who agreed to answer our questions.
How did you hear about Soltis?
D.Z: An acquaintance told me about Soltis and advised me to contact them.
What convinced you to choose Soltis to install solar panels?
D.Z: Because it was a Belgian start-up, the concept interested me and we were in the same situation when we started up.
What installations have we carried out at your company?
D.Z: First of all, an installation of 1,000 solar panels in 2013. In addition to financial leverage, our aim was to take an environmental approach, since our business requires a lot of energy.
It's important to know that to manufacture glass, whether it's a basic product or a processed product, energy is consumed. All the grams of CO2 used to manufacture the product will have an environmental return on investment of no more than two months, i.e. after two months: we'll have completely erased the carbon footprint required for production. If we want to go all the way with this approach, we have to do the same with our own consumption, hence the idea of saying to ourselves "maybe we'll get over the hurdle".
What percentage of your consumption covers the plant's output?
D.Z : It covers a third of consumption, which isn't all, but it's far from negligible.
How did the installation go in terms of monitoring, production and communication with Soltis?
D.Z: Like a big building site. The installation took place in July and took three weeks to complete, with no "hitches" to report. What took the longest was the stability study, due to the weight of the structure.
We also took out the maintenance contract so that we wouldn't have to do all the follow-up maintenance ourselves, as we're not professionals in this kind of technology.
What made you decide to switch to LED?
D.Z: We'd been toying with the idea for a few years, and wanted to reduce our energy costs, so we decided to install LEDs in 2020. In fact, the use of neon was one of the plant's biggest energy expenses. LED relamping therefore allows us to make significant savings, not only because it avoids loss of light output, but also because it considerably reduces maintenance and replacement costs.
What's more, since we're working with a product that is by definition transparent and where reflection is important, the most important thing for us is to prevent workers from injuring themselves. Thanks to today's LED technologies, we can achieve a sufficient lumen threshold even at a height of 12 meters, thus ensuring the safety of our workers.
What do you think of the lighting in the hall and in your offices?
D.Z: The rendering in the hall is a little higher and in the offices, it changes everything. All this light makes it feel like summer.
Did you encounter any problems during installation?
D.Z: Thanks to the perfect understanding between our production manager and your project manager, we can see that there were no bottlenecks whatsoever in our production and that everything flowed smoothly. There were no disturbances.
Why would you recommend Soltis?
D.Z: I'd recommend Soltis because it's a Belgian SME with very good value for money, and you know that if there's a problem, Soltis will respond within a day. You're not just buying a product, you're buying a solution.
And what about the future?
D.Z : With the evolution of cars, vans and other vehicles, we know that we're going to have to move towards either hybrid or totally electric vehicles. To stay as green as possible, we're thinking about installing recharging stations and increasing our panel cover-in.
Discover the results of our installations at Eurover
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