The History of Van Kappel
The Van Kappel family originally from Holland, emigrated to South Africa in the 1950’s, returned to Holland in the 1970s, when its European business was established in the vehicle retail market, where it became the largest Bosch agency in Holland.
VK moved into the arena of Just In Time (JIT) engineering service and logistic support provision to the world’s largest road transport fleets, based across 5 sites in the EU.
In 1994 Van Kappel was contracted to provide Direct Repair Service (DRS) to BAOR to assist with Equipment Support to the British Army equipment in Germany.
Divergent interests in Thailand (Golf and leisure), South Africa (Property development) and Spain (Vineyards), however, the British Army remains the core customer.
Based on the success of DRS in BAOR, and poor platform availability in Canada (BATUS), the British MOD requested Van Kappel to establish a facility in Redcliff Alberta. In May 2007, Van Kappel International (VKI) was established, following which availability increased from an average of 40% to a figure of 80+%.
Complementary to DRS provision, VKI has also supplied technically qualified engineers to supplement the Army Base Repair Organisation (ABRO/DSG) staff when requested to do so in support of the BATUS Winter Repair programmes (WRP).
In 2013 following successful trials, VKI assumed responsibility for CV8 Power Pack (PP) regeneration for BATUS and are exploring the opportunities to widen the scope for other armoured PPs.
In 2014 VKI were contracted by BAES to support the BULLDOG PP regeneration programme, this support continues, albeit as a facet of the DRS contract.
Over the time that VKI has supported BATUS it has also provided technical manpower for the completion of Modification Programmes and Filed Support Engineers (FSR’s).
In 2012 Van Kappel Ltd (VK Ltd) was established to deliver strategic and commercial development for the wider MoD business, subsequently in 2013 VK Ltd successfully bid for and won the CR2 APU Level 4 repair and overhaul contract. This was followed in 2015 with the WR APU repair and overhaul contract.