Earlier this year, I introduced myself to all of you and shared my initial ideas about our strategy at Intergas. I wrote at that time that ‘our market is changing faster than ever before and requires a great deal of our flexibility and ability to adapt’. I never could have guessed that only a few weeks later a terrible war would break out in Ukraine, with a tremendous impact on the energy market in Europe.

While sustainability was a kind of trend ten years ago – and thanks to the Paris climate accord also a goal for our market – the developments in Ukraine have made the same drive towards sustainability a necessity. It’s clear that our market will change forever, and I mean soon. The number of heat pumps (all-electric and hybrid) installed everywhere will skyrocket. The EU wants twice as many heat pumps to be installed over five years than there are today, and some European countries have raised the bar even higher than that. That will be a monumental task – and for Intergas also a huge opportunity.

In my introduction in February, I wrote that we’d start working on our strategic objectives: the ‘what’ (what type of products), ‘where’ (in which market areas) and ‘when’ (in what order). Thanks in part to the rapid developments in the world around us, we as the management at Intergas have since made some clear choices: our main focus in the coming years will be on Xtend, our hybrid boiler/heat pump. Last year’s field tests prove that this is the best – and maybe even the only – sustainable solution for existing homes. In the meantime, the Dutch government has realised this too and is developing legislation which will make it compulsory as from 2026 to install a hybrid unit whenever replacing old boilers. We’re convinced that other countries in Europe will follow suit.

Our choice means that we’ll stay close to our historical basis: we’ll continue to develop our boilers (as part of hybrids, but also for export) while we also plan a long list of improvements for our Xtend. This will ultimately enable us to bring the best hybrid solution to market, just like we currently provide our customers with the best boiler. And after we’ve secured our 40% market share in the Netherlands for hybrids too, we’ll start implementing the hybrid solution outside the Netherlands as well, such as in the UK and Germany. At the same time, we’ll continue to develop the digital solutions that will support the hybrid systems. Finally, spare parts will become increasingly important in these developments. We’ll be focusing a lot more on that aspect too.

We’re going to invest heavily to put our strategy into practice. First of all, we’re planning a new training centre in the middle of the country so that our customers in the Netherlands are well prepared for the new hybrid era. You’ll see our R&D team grow substantially in order to accelerate our product development, and we’ll be adding technical and other specialists to our sales department to help customers with the coming transition to hybrid solutions. Finally, we’ll also continue to invest in our means of production. The number of boilers that we need to produce will grow in the years to come, which means we’ll be adding an internal unit for hybrids.

We’ll enjoy the full support of our parent company, Rheem, as we pursue our goals. They embrace our decisions, give us the means to invest and provide us with the assistance that we need.

But we need to tackle a big part of our job here in Europe: to achieve our goals, we need a strong organisation, one which will need to grow substantially in the years to come. That might sound like a challenge, but I’m convinced that we’ll achieve it by working together. After all, Intergas is a great company to work for: a successful company in a huge growth market and part of a strong, worldwide enterprise. And most important: at the heart of making our market more sustainable. We all want to be part of that!

I’m really looking forward to the future. I’m counting on all of you to tackle this challenge together.

Arno La Haye
Managing Director Intergas

Introduction Fokko van der Zee – Director Sales & Marketing Intergas

Helping with the energy transition in Europe: that inspires me and fills me with energy!

I’m Fokko van der Zee, 48 years of age, and I live in Arnhem with my partner, Anneloes. Our adult children are both university students and no longer live at home. I grew up in Winschoten, and when I was 18 I went to the Royal Navy to become a naval officer, after which I studied Industrial Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology. After 12 years of the navy and many years on submarines, I became a civilian. I’ve spent the past 18 years working for various global companies in the technology business (Thales, General Electric and Nedap) in both sales and operational positions.

I look forward to working with all of you to make Intergas a market leader for the energy transition in Europe!

Fokko van der Zee

By now it’s known far and wide within Intergas that we’re hard at work on developing our new hybrid heat pump: Intergas Xtend. In the introduction to this newsletter, Arno already said that our main focus in the coming years will be to develop our own range of hybrid heat pumps. We unveiled the Xtend to our customers at the last VSK exhibition in Utrecht. They were very enthusiastic about it. They really liked its compact size, nice design and flexible installation options, in particular.

Progress

Last week we had the production of our very first split external heat pump units, which we developed with our supplier Blue Star. Expectations are that we’ll be able to sign off on the batch production for these external units as from the end of July. In addition, we’ve now completed two pre-pilot projects with the internal unit that we developed in-house. You can read more about that in the following article. As things look now, we’ll be passing the last gate of this project at the end of September and will be able to give the green light for the first batch production of our Xtend.

We’ve decided to sell and deliver the first 1000 Xtends to a selected group of customers in the Netherlands, with a view to a controlled and manageable launch. We’ll be delivering these 1000 units in various batches, with the first ones going to these customers in October. We expect to be able to increase this number after the first 1000.

Training courses
Training is an important part of the product introduction. It’s important not only for our customers, of course, but also for our own internal organisation. At present, a special project group is giving further shape to training on the Xtend. Step 1 is to inform and train our own people in the Netherlands. The second step is to train a selected group of installers. This will begin in the months after summer holiday.

 Hybrid heat pump is solution to energy issue
The Dutch government recently announced that heating systems will be subject to green requirements starting in 2026. What this actually means is that as from 2026, hybrids will become the standard replacement for old central heating boilers.

While hybrids were formerly considered a temporary solution, we’re now seeing that they could also be a suitable final solution. Because of the costs, all-electric units are available to only a small group of people, and it would take all the electricity on the power grid to run them. That means leaving the rest of the Netherlands without an energy-efficient solution and that too much CO2 is still being emitted. In that sense, our hybrids are a societal solution. They are affordable and enable up to an 80% reduction in gas consumption, provided that they are properly adjusted. To cut gas consumption to zero ultimately, you can always install another boiler for hot water; and the proper set-up of central heating radiators and better insulation helps a lot too. There are years of time for that after the hybrid has been installed. Very little gas is needed for the hybrid water pump, and that can be obtained from green gas or hydrogen.

With the development of our own hybrid, Intergas has taken another great step towards the future. Given the first positive signs from our customers, we’re very confident that our hybrid’s going to be a success.

Ralf Jansen – Head of Marketing & Communications

The end of June saw a test run for five hybrid boilers on line 6 – the Xtend.

Part of the line had to be modified for its size of a large shoebox. This means that extra plastic runners had to be inserted to keep the existing rollers from damaging the casing, but also to ensure that the boiler would not fall through or off.

The way of testing the equipment was also different than usual. The Xtend does not yet fit on an existing interface, so a provisional connection needed to be made between the test cabinet and boiler using extra hoses and cables.

Since the boiler is so small, it was decided to assemble it in different working areas and not on the line itself. This means that one assembler will put together the entire boiler from start to finish rather than in blocks, such as things are usually done in IG2. The idea is for assembly to take a total of about six minutes. That’s one-fourth of a variant of the Xtreme.

The assembly work is simple: the boiler contains a plate heat exchanger, pump, flow sensor and burner control. And since the boiler is still in the development stage, we used 3D-printed nuts.

Another test run is expected at the start of July. We can’t wait to see how that goes.