Our history
Louis Ruys started as a hardware supply company in Antwerp in 1904 under the name Anglo-American Hardware Company. It was founded by Mr. Louis Ruys.
During the German occupation of Belgium in the First World War trade was impossible and the company relocated to Leuvehaven in Rotterdam in 1916.
The building on Leuvehaven was destroyed during the bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940. After the war, the company relocated to a new building on Boompjes Boulevard.
From there it relocated to Coolhaven in 1956. In 2002, Louis Ruys left Rotterdam for a larger and more accessible building on the outskirt of Rotterdam.
Following steady growth, the company once again needed more spacious premises. That is why the construction on a new building on Ohmstraat in Zwijndrecht was started, which was moved into in 2018. This building is ideally situated to receive supplies from the Port of Rotterdam and for further transport to end clients.
Our office, warehouse, and workshop employees can enjoy a modern and sustainable building with lots of natural light. Our building reflects who we are as a company: transparent, reliable, and with an eye for the social responsibilities expected of an organization like ours.
What does Louis Ruys do?
In response to changing market demands, we began to specialise in what has now become our core business: the import, wholesale, and export of steel cables and chains.
In addition to these product groups, Louis Ruys carries an extensive range of products that are directly or indirectly related to steel cables, such as cable clamps, tensioners, and closures.
Within this range, four renowned brands stand out: Goliath manual winches, KITO lifting chains and accessories, Lewis lifting and tensioning equipment, and Brügg architectural cables. Louis Ruys is the exclusive distributor of these brands in local markets.
Louis Ruys keeps stock
Since 2018 we have been located in a building tailored to our company, with a 6000-square-metre warehouse.
This modern warehouse allows us to maintain an impressive inventory. It also allows us to adapt to market fluctuations and changing delivery times from suppliers. By keeping many of our products in stock, we can guarantee fast delivery times.
Louis Ruys creates
Our building in Zwijndrecht in the Netherlands has a spacious workshop that is equipped with an extensive machine park, including automatic cable-cutting and cable-winding machines, presses and rollers.
This enables us to produce tailor-made steel cable at the customer’s request and to add thimbles, slings or an extensive range of end connections, such as screw studs, tensioners, yokes and eyes.
We can also cut our chains to size using several chain-cutting machines and add a wide range of hooks, closures and links.
Louis Ruys is flexible and reliable
We have operated as a financially independent company for more than a century. As a result we can make our own decisions and we have the flexibility to adapt to the needs of our customers and suppliers. We have built and maintained strong relationship in our long history, which is something we value and prioritise.
For decades, we have served as a valued discussion partner for customers in various industries. In fact, we’ve been the preferred supplier for some of our customers for four generations now.
Trust, reliability, and good business practices lie at the heart of Louis Ruys. We find it important to focus on the long term, looking not only at today but also at tomorrow.
At Louis Ruys, we are experts
Over the years, Louis Ruys has acquired extensive experience in steel cables and chains in a wide range of industries. As such, we can always offer our customers expert advice on the specific application of a product.
Our quality procedures and business processes are described in our quality management system. Louis Ruys is an ISO 9001-certified company.
Quality is the main driver of our actions. Thanks to our many years of experience, we know exactly what we need to look out for. The first step in our quality assurance process is our extensive screening of machines, quality management, and quality control of the plants that we work with.
We also carry out a quality check on any batch that arrives at our facilities. But we also process and assemble our products ourselves. As such, we control the assembly process, performing a visual inspection of many of the products, to ensure for example that a cable has been properly produced and is volt-free.
We also have our own testing room, with a XRF-analyzer, Deltascope and hydrochloric acid tester. With this we check the chemical composition of steel and the galvanisation of the material ourselves. The breaking load, fatigue, and steel structure of our products are also regularly tested in an external commercial laboratory.
Finally, we also keep in close contact with our customers, ensuring we receive regular feedback on the quality of our products. We rely on this feedback to optimise the quality of our products.
Louis Ruys is sustainable
We operate out of a sustainable building, based on the belief that our company should respect and take responsibility for the environment. By opting for sustainable heat sources: a heat pump, solar panels and heat pipes solar collectors, we are able to produce more energy than we consume. As a result, we supply a large amount of electricity back to the grid.
The garden surrounding our building has been sustainably landscaped, with standard fruit trees and room for wild plants. This creates a green environment for insects and birds and the ideal location for our bee-keeper to tend to our honey-producing beehives
