UNSUNG HEROES |
INDUSTRY STALWART RETIRES AFTER FOUR DECADES
I
ndustry stalwart Cor de Kruijf (aka Mr. IP) has retired after more than four decades in the industry, the majority of which was spent at The
Crosby Group. “I’m happy in retirement and can
reflect on a job well done, I was always conscious, especially in the later years of my career, that the company and the industry must go on without me so I spent as much time as possible passing my knowledge on to the next generation,” said de Kruijf. Under the tutorship of Martinus B. van
de Wetering, owner of Inter Product (IP), in the Netherlands, Kruijf worked as a mechanical engineer. Prior to that he was at Stork, now a
Fluor company, in Utrecht. At the time, IP had 50 employees and did everything from purchasing, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, and sales. It was eventually bought by The Crosby Group. “Martinus was my teacher. I learnt most things I know from him. At the time, there was no documented knowledge or means to study lifting clamps. Most things you learnt were in practice and
R Cor de Kruijf started in the drawing room as a mechanical engineer in the mid-1970s.
the progression of the product sector was reliant on people like Martinus to be creative and see the solution through the lifting problem. This isn’t something you can learn in school. That being the case, I started to understand that we were largely responsible for taking our industry forward,” added de Kruijf. “To be called Mr. IP is flattering but it’s always been a team effort.” Kees Gillesse, product development engineer, The Crosby Group, says 75%
of the products in its lifting clamps catalogue has been at least in part designed by de Kruijf. CrosbyIP-branded clamps are The
Crosby Group’s range of vertical lifting clamps, but the catalogue has expanded to include hundreds of others, including IPU (universal; any direction) and IPH (horizontal), to name a few. One that stands out for de Kruijf is his first - the IPPE clamp, for lifting and transporting non-bendable sheet mental in a horizontal position. The jaw opening can be easily adjusted for the height of the bundle or plate. Magnets in the foot-plate allow one person to operate multiple clamps simultaneously. “When I started developing lifting clamps,” he recalls, “All calculations were done with an arithmetic ruler and the drawings drafted with a pencil. When the dimensions were good, I would put them in ink. Later came the calculator, before drawings were made by computer; we all know about today’s computer- aided design [CAD] capability. Modern technology enables us to develop different working load limits of the same model clamp much easier.” The IPGNS, however, is de Kruijf’s
R Cor de Kruijf hard at work in the modern day drawing room. 20 | March 2022 |
www.hoistmagazine.com
favourite clamp - a non-marring product up to 6t capacity, now available with either steel or stainless-steel clamping plates, allowing the clamp to be used in wet conditions. “It isn’t necessarily the most standout clamp on its own,” he says, “But it went on to inspire many other clamps and its features are seen in multiple models.
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