60 years of Selmers on the road: from Mexico to Siberia

Sixty years of Selmers also means sixty years of packing suitcases. To visit customers, projects and plants all over the world. Travelling was very different back then. Sometimes you would be away for weeks, with little more than a fax or a crackling modem to stay in touch with home. And of course, things happened along the way. Siberian snow, aircraft wrecks, an open helicopter door… Some stories are simply worth telling again.

Mexico, then and now

In 2007, Selmers sold its first complete plant on another continent, in Tampico, Mexico. Today, Mexico is familiar territory. Chris Baars, Area Sales Manager for the Americas, travels to the United States and Mexico around eight or nine times a year. The job doesn’t always take him to the places you would pick for a holiday. “The steel and pipe industry simply isn’t usually located in the most beautiful parts of the world,” he says. But when there is time to travel between customers, he sometimes finds himself driving through some truly beautiful areas.

A fax and a crackling modem

Rob Schouten also remembers how different travelling for Selmers used to be. He describes his first trip to Ukraine as “a whole new world”. You couldn’t simply make a call if something came up. A fax was about all you had. “They put you on a plane and you had no idea where you were going to end up.”

And some flights required a little extra faith. At an airport in Iran, Rob saw several aircraft wrecks. “We were going to take off. Well, we hoped we would,” he recalls.

Jan Peter’s first long-distance trip for Selmers was one to remember. Together with Jan Lemmens, he travelled to Khartoum in Sudan. He calls it “a massive eye-opener”: a completely different culture and safety conditions to say the least. Also at a time when mobile phones existed but internet access was still scarce. Sending an email meant using a separate 14.4k modem, complete with that familiar crackling sound. And it wasn’t easy to leave the country either at the end of their stay. What happened? The trip was extended with one day and the customs were asking for an exit visa. With help of their local agent and under the eye of guards with kalashnikovs, both gentlemen got renewed visa and were happy to leave the country.

Adventures in Siberia

Former Selmers director Jan Lemmens travelled to projects in Russia and Siberia for many years with Selmers’ Russian agent, Arkadi Liandres. On one of those trips, they boarded an old military helicopter. Water started dripping from the ceiling onto the instrument panel, but the pilot didn’t seem concerned. Below them was little more than an endless expanse of white.

When the pilot started his descent, Arkadi asked how he knew they were in the right place. “I just know,” came the answer. A little later, he dropped them off in the middle of nowhere. “Take your suitcases. Someone will come and pick you up. Goodbye!” And off he went. There they were, knee-deep in snow at minus thirty, not a house or a pub in sight. Twenty minutes later, a van turned up to collect them after all.

The door was still open

Another trip to Siberia, this time in summer. When Jan and Arkadi reached their helicopter, they noticed that some parts were missing. Those parts were lying on the ground. The pilot assured them he was simply checking the aircraft before take-off.

Eventually, everything was back in place. At least, as far as they could tell. They took off but at around two hundred metres, the helicopter suddenly started descending again. The rear door was still open. Arkadi simply closed it himself.

The engineer comes along for the ride

In China, Jan was travelling with Fang Gang, Selmers’ agent in China, to visit several pipe coating plants that Selmers might be able to modernise. On the return journey from Urumchi to Beijing, there turned out to be a problem with their aircraft. It was two days before they could finally leave.

Once in the air, Jan got talking to a Chinese fellow passenger. The man turned out to be an aviation electronics engineer and the person who had just repaired their aircraft. There had been quite a few problems with it, so he was travelling along just in case anything went wrong again. Jan ordered another beer.

Travelling for Selmers is very different today. Still, as long as customers and projects take Selmers around the world, new stories will always come home with them.