For thirty-five years, Holland Pump Company has been providing solutions for dewatering applications for numerous markets from residential and commercial construction to phosphate mining, paper mills, and power plants to municipal storm water, utilities, and lift stations to working in the sugar industry extensively and on many of Florida water management projects including dewatering for recent ACOE (Army Corp of Engineers) projects in Collier county.
THE SEARCH FOR LONG-TERM ANSWERS . . .
“For years, some of our best customers in the sugar industry have told me that there really is not a one stop pump company for the agriculture industry that can provide engineering, fabrication, service, maintenance, and rentals with a high level of professionalism. To be sure there are some mostly very small manufacturers making pumps in small shops that can repair a pump fairly quickly. But for the most part, there are a lot of low cost pumps out there that are inefficient in design and construction. In the long run these inefficiencies translate to high energy costs and higher maintenance costs,” says Win Blodgett, president of rental operations.
To strengthen their agriculture position, Holland Pump hired David Berggren as their agricultural pump manager. David has deep ties to the Florida farming community through his previous employment in his family business, Berggren Equipment Company, which served South Florida for forty-three years. He has had extensive experience with pumps in agricultural applications and is working side-by-side with the company’s fourteen pump consultants.
As one of Holland’s vendors recently said, “It has been a long time since a Florida pump company really went after the service business in a personal and comprehensive way. There is definitely a need for a company to provide this service to our farming community.”
. . . AND IMMEDIATE RESULTS
“As professional pump consultants,” Win adds, “we can help evaluate your needs, craft a cost effective solution, engineer and fabricate a replacement pump (or repair), and provide temporary pumping if needed. We have a rental pump fleet of over 600 pumps with branch and service locations in Pensacola; Jacksonville; Orlando; Tampa; Fort Myers; West Palm Beach; and Walterboro, South Carolina.”
Holland Pump Company feels there is a strong market for rental pumps because many times pumps are needed on a short term basis such as a substitute during a pump repair or pump replacement or during extreme weather changes like a drought or a flood.
The company’s roster of rental pumps range in sizes from 4 to 42 inches (101.6 to 1066.8 millimeters) that have pumping capacities of 500 to 55,000 gallons (1892.71 to 208,197.65 liters) per minute. Whether a customer requires an electric or diesel driven pump, Holland Pump strives to help them “finish faster”—the ultimate goal being to help their customers save money on rent, fuel, crew, and equipment costs.
A FOUNDATION OF RESPONSIVE SOLUTIONS
Holland Pump Group chairman Bill Blodgett grew up in Palm Beach County, went on to serve in senior executive positions at several manufacturing and transportation companies, and founded several start-up companies. Bill owned Roberts Express, known today as FedEx Custom Critical, which was the number one trucking company in the U.S.A. seven years in a row and revolutionized the expedited freight industry. Retiring at age 48, Bill spent seven years circumnavigating the globe in his 63-foot sailboat with wife, Alicia. “Although I had been around diesel engines extensively in the transportation business, seven years at sea honed not only my diesel mechanic skills but also my 12-volt wiring and electronics skills.”
In 1999, Bill acquired Holland Pump Company and in recent years has turned his primary focus to developing Holland Pump’s subsidiary LobePro, which makes positive displacement pumps for a world-wide market. “There are many parallels between an expedited trucking company like FedEx and Holland Pump. Our customers want the overall best value that will save their operations money and help them finish their jobs faster,” says Bill.
Holland Pump has many opportunities to provide pump users value—including professional pump consulting, careful engineering and fabrication, thorough field service, and top quality equipment with technological know-how.
“I am extremely proud of our company and our employees. We’re an ‘old school’ company with traditional values and we have achieved a strong reputation by consistently satisfying our customers,” says Bill. “We are all about teamwork. We demand a lot of our employees because we promise to deliver solutions to our customers on 24/7 basis. Our average employee has been with us nine years and our senior management team has between twenty and thirty years of service to Holland Pump.”
THE SOLUTION FOR SLUDGE
“For the last three decades we have been manufacturing, selling, renting, and servicing hydraulically driven submersible and axial flow propeller pumps, manual and prime assisted suction lift pumps including high pressure pumps, and positive displacement rotary lobe pumps most commonly used for applications like wellpointing,” says Win. “But as it turns out our LobePro pumps are even better suited for sludge applications typically found in agriculture.”
The company has a message to farmers and invites the agricultural community to reexamine the ways that it is currently using its pumps. Furthermore, farmers should consider using pumps for everyday applications like culvert replacement where perhaps they have not considered using pumps before. ■
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Long is the marketing manager at Holland Pump Company. To learn more about Holland Pump, visit www.hollandpump.com or, to speak with Holland Pump Consultant, call 800.451.0769.
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MODERN PUMPING TODAY, December 2013
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