Vic Swerts, chairman & owner of Soudal, has won the Vlerick Award 2010. The audience chose for Vic Swerts, because he lead his company Soudal with sustained results to the international top in the field of sealants, PU-Foams and adhesives. The other nominees were: Michaël Bremans (Ecover), Thomas Leysen (Umicore) & Jean Stéphenne (GSK Biologicals).
Almost 600 alumni and VIPs attended the 10th Vlerick Award that took place on Thursday April 19th in Kinepolis Brussels. This jubilee edition was attended by a lot of former winners and nominees.
ABOUT VIC SWERTS – SOUDAL
For Vic Swerts it all started in 1966 at the Ossenmarkt in Antwerp. Swerts was 26 at the time and he bought a little company specialising in welding materials and the manufacture of polyester repair pastes used to repair damaged car body parts. The small factory soon couldn't keep up with demand and it moved first to his parents' horticulture operation in Turnhout and later to the Turnhout industry park, where Soudal NV was founded in 1981. Soudal expanded, its export activities grew systematically and in 1992 it made the first of a series of acquisitions. Vic Swerts not only focuses on growth, but also quality, as proven by the ISO 9002 certificate Soudal received that same year. The Polish building industry named the brand "brand of the year" no less than three times. Today, Soudal is an international export company famous for its pointing kits, glues and PU foam. The company employs more than 1000 people in some thirty offices and it is active in more than 120 countries. As a reward for his unremitting vitality and ambition, Vic Swerts was awarded the decoration of Officer in the Order of Leopold by the governor of Antwerp, Camiel Paulus, in 2006. According to self-made man Swerts, his company's success resulted from a combination of quality, customer-oriented solutions and the best possible after-sale service.