INTOS – Partner in Business - Intervet Boxmeer

For the packaging of injectors and other activities, Intervet has relied on the support of INTOS in the Dutch town of Gennep for more than 35 years. This is not just a company, but a business service provider specialized in working with the mentally handicapped. Since INTOS strives to be not only a supplier but especially a partner of Intervet, it was recently awarded the GMP certificate, with a little help from Boxmeer.

"We aren’t the cheapest, but we are reliable, and we deliver quality products," says INTOS managing director Wim le Clercq, and he has the figures to prove it. Gazelle, the bicycle manufacturer, employs INTOS to assemble bicycle wheels; 250,000 a year for 42 years. You cannot keep a customer like that for nearly half a century if the quality of your work is below standard. Intervet has used the company’s services for over 35 years. Nowadays, some 26 million injectors are sent to Gennep every year to be labeled and packaged. For the last few years, the company has also packaged other products, such as 10,000 flea collars a day and three million pipettes a year.

What Intervet outsources to INTOS is called “short-cycle work.” This refers to minor jobs that have to be repeated over and over, like folding boxes, assembling injectors and enclosing patient information leaflets. This all used to be done by hand, but there are now machines to do it – there are not many people who can be persuaded to do this kind of work. The personnel at INTOS actually enjoy it, however. These are activities they can master and can be confident in because they are repetitive and hardly anything changes. 

INTOS is based in Gennep, The Netherlands and stands for “INdustriële TOelevering en Service” (Industrial Supply and Service). The company employs people who find it difficult to find their way to the labor market on their own, particularly the long-term unemployed and the disabled. What is still referred to as “sheltered employment” is in fact a business with all the latest equipment that is capable of producing quality work at a price that is no different than that charged by a regular organization. 
The workforce of over 400 people is involved in:

• metalwork
• assembly work
• packaging work
• storage, logistics and transport 

People are also seconded to other companies, schools or municipal councils. 
INTOS specializes in working with the mentally handicapped. The company has its own technical department that can design or modify the necessary equipment or machines. In 1998, INTOS was awarded an ISO certificate and it now has a GMP certificate as well.