Winter Chestnuts - Issue 9

Quality matters – Van Walt signs up for ISO 9001

For many years Van Walt has resisted going down the ISO process because we believed we already had the necessary procedures, practices and measures in place to ensure we delivered excellent service to our customers. But we can resist no more and have finally resolved to get ourselves accredited to the ISO 9001 standard!

Van Walt's products make it onto TV – well nearly!

Recently the Channel 5 series – 'Megastructures' featured the elaborate and dangerous demolition of four obsolete cooling towers at the Sellafield power plant. A family-run company from America with specialist expertise in demolition had been selected to dismantle the 90m-high towers. The team planted 4,000 sticks of dynamite in such a way that the structures didn't hit nearby buildings when they collapsed.

Are you 'twittering' yet? - Van Walt is!

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging site that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text based posts of up to 140 characters – short bursts - displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users - known as followers - who have subscribed to them.

Is China to blame for the global environmental crisis?

As early as 1995 environmentalists were warning that China's increasing demand for commodities would drive prices to record highs and the impact of its affluence would be felt in the form of greenhouse gases emissions.

A range of products - whatever your requirements

Whether you're looking for a 'surface water sampler' or the most precise, accurate electronic soil-moisture measuring system on the market that works by the wireless transfer of soil moisture and soil temperature data by Bluetooth to a PDA – the PICO-BT Bluetooth Module - we have one of the most extensive ranges of environmental equipment – to rent or buy - in the UK.

Where did you last see a Van Walt mini auger?

Well if you're unfortunate enough to be in Afghanistan – then you might well see them there. The Army is a regular customer of our mini augers – for geological and environmental research.

The message is – don't underestimate the value of a good quality hand auger – they are lightweight, cheap and efficient soil investigation tools. And all those supplied by Van Walt are unpainted and untreated so are suitable for all environmental research.

Our training course goes from strength to strength

We have just completed another very successful training course with delegates from all over the UK and the Republic of Ireland and places are going quickly for the next course on 30th September, 1st & 2nd October 2009.

How 'green' are wind farms?

The growth in renewable energy as a means to tackle climate change is a well known argument but the development of wind farms - the world's fastest-growing source of power - particularly when placed in equally important environmental areas like peat land (rolling hills near the sea which offer the right kind of wind are also the right conditions for bogs) and the adverse affects this could have on the environment is less well documented outside of the environmental community.

What's all the noise about?

If you've been on the phone to us lately and couldn't help but notice the noise rest assured its good news – we are expanding! Due to increased demand for our rental equipment we have brought in the builders to create a larger rental room.

A warm welcome to Laura...

Laura Thorne joins us as from college and 6 months traveling around Australia. She is responsible for sales support and administration so will probably be the first person you speak to when you next call us. In addition, Laura will be managing our couriers, sales ledger administration and all sales documentation as well as supporting Yvonne and Tracey with database maintenance and new updates.

Vincent wins a prize!

Recently, for a bit of fun, everyone in the office entered a competition run by our catalogue printer – L&S Printing, one of the largest colour printers in the South of England – to win a tour of the presses, lunch for up to 4 people and £150 of garden centre vouchers.

And Vincent was the lucky winner!

He is yet to set a date to take up his prize and, despite the win, we are already planning our next project with L&S to further promote our growing product range.