Sealing Valley - that should become the name of the Dutch version of Silicon Valley. An environment where knowledge, creativity and entrepreneurship come together. The Dutch company Beele Engineering is the initiator and driving force behind this new knowledge environment.
Unlike Silicon Valley, Sealiing Valley will not be about semiconductors and computers but about sealing technology designed to protect our living and working environments from fire and water. For more than 40 years, the Achterhoek-based company has been researching rubber types that are fire-resistant. A remarkable choice because rubber as we know it from car tyres, for instance, burns like a torch. Yet the company succeeded where the rubber also proved to be water-, smoke- and gas-tight. It has led to the company having an unprecedented number of patents to its name in recent decades.
Rubbers are used for sealing systems that 'seal' openings for cables and pipes through walls and floors. Sealing is no easy task; after all, the product used now must still work if a fire breaks out in 50 years' time. To be sure of that, the company from Aalten conducts research on a large scale. Its own laboratories and its own fire lab, where future situations are simulated on a daily basis, provide that certainty.
Sealing Valley is intended to make the knowledge thus accumulated more accessible. For students, companies, governments and anyone else who is or feels involved in fire safety in one way or another. That there is a lot to tell is clear from the size of Sealing Valley. In total, the knowledge and expertise centre comprises 45,000 square metres: good for 9 football pitches. Besides knowledge building and knowledge transfer, part of the company's production will also be housed here. The completion of the first part of Sealing Valley is scheduled for the end of 2018.
