2023-09-14 07:58:00
BS: It brings together around twenty companies active in five sectors: infrastructure (roads and various networks, contractors, structures, civil engineering, hydrocarbon and special works), deconstruction (urban and technical, on the surface and at height ), the building (commercial and industrial spaces, office construction, logistics halls and showrooms), electricity (distribution, electromechanics, telecoms, fiber optics, public lighting) and finally, industry and circularity (tarmac power plant, production factories reinforced concrete and prestressed concrete, limestone quarries, inert waste sorting center)
CW: Last year we achieved a consolidated turnover of 315 million euros. With the takeover of Martens Democom in Genk this summer which puts us in the top 5 deconstruction companies in Europe, we are counting on an increase of 10 to 12%, we should reach 350 million at the end of the financial year. For a workforce of 1600 workers. We generate 85% of our turnover in Wallonia, 10% internationally, mainly in France and 5% in the north of the country.
What is the state of the markets in which you operate?
BS: Our production volume has decreased compared to 2018-2019. However, we are now working on projects that are more labor intensive. If real estate investments have declined, the recovery plan, the European Feder programs and the approach of the electoral deadlines should boost our order book. It is full in one and a half years for Wanty, one year for our subsidiary ICM and is a little less full for our subsidiary Ronveaux which faces competition from Flanders for its construction division. But we have no worries regarding the future where we should strengthen our market shares abroad.
Recruitment has become complicated in Belgium. Is this a feeling you share?
CW: Around a hundred talents join our group on average every year. A third through internal mobility or recruitment, a third through our Wanty Academy and a third following internships carried out in our companies. The challenge is no longer just to recruit in 2023 but to be able to keep our good elements. Since Covid, workers need a career plan, they want to move up the salary scale and broaden their skills. As soon as the employer offers them opportunities, they stay. I will take the example of this laborer of Romanian origin whom we hired several years ago. He has now become a surveyor, just as some of his fellow workers have become site managers. Covid has also contributed to putting work following leisure and family. Sometimes we feel a lack of desire…
What is Wanty Academy?
BS: It is a training center for technical professions that we created internally, to meet our own needs. We set it up in 2019 a little before Covid, as part of a partnership with IFAPME and Forem. Before, staff trained on the job, sometimes following an apprenticeship at school. But this practice is being lost. We replaced it. Since 2019, 80 job seekers have participated in our sessions, 59 have been hired.
Is qualifying training a challenge for Wallonia?
CW: Of course! Investors pay attention to the quality of the workforce they will find in their location. But for it to be effective, qualifying training must be confronted with the real working conditions of the sectors. In our group, staff have to get up very early. We leave at 6 a.m. to reach the construction sites, sometimes more than 100 kilometers away. You have to be courageous and motivated to do it. And when I say motivated, I’m talking regarding the financial differential between a basic salary and a replacement allowance. For us, the gap is not sufficient!
How have your jobs evolved over 25 years?
BS: The chain of our professions has become longer and more professional. The market demands it: everything has become more complex, we have to be extremely rigorous. We are subject to increasingly restrictive quality standards, our activity and our work are controlled, we must go ever further in quality and safety. In 2023, our workers are no longer versatile. In 1998 they might go from bulldozing to excavators, from roads to demolition. It’s finish. Today, they are specialists, they must be at the cutting edge and up to what is asked of them. We are no longer in the same paradigm at all!
What to expect from schools in this context?
CW: That they strive for excellence. Because that’s what customers expect from the business world. For this reason, politics must provide the means for education, research and development. Wallonia needs to reindustrialize to create new wealth. For 30 years that we have known each other with Benoît (Editor’s note: their meeting dates back to university in Louvain-la-Neuve), for 25 years that we have worked together, we have been working to make this Wallonia more attractive, more efficient.
Shouldn’t we put a stop to concrete?
BS: I may surprise you, but leaving the soil to agriculture seems essential to us. Indeed, there are plenty of wastelands to be converted! The 2,500 disused industrial sites offer 4,500 hectares to Wallonia, around a hundred of which are rehabilitated each year. So we have potential and work to do. So yes, stop the concreting. Let’s focus our efforts on rehabilitation. It is the responsibility of our politicians to move forward in this direction.
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