In July 2019, 15 years have passed since the establishment of BIC Electric, now Eryk. In 2004 we decided to start operations independently.
From a small company, based in the suburbs of Szczecin, Poland, we have grown into a global player executing exciting projects for world-renowned customers on almost all continents. Eryk’s success story is a fantastic case to follow and a perfect example of a cross-border business whose key ingredients are competences and passion. Argentina, Dubai, Singapore, New Zealand, China, Australia… We have been nearly everywhere. How did all of this happen? See below.
At the start, Eryk- that time: BIC, was just a spin-off of a now-defunct Danish company Demex Electric. Already then, we noticed that our unique contribution to the market could be scalability and flexibility of technical operations.
Our primary business then was construction of electrical distribution panels in a workshop in Szczecin and we only had 5 employees. Our focus was Denmark. The workforce grew quickly, we moved to a bigger workshop in Goleniów, and we could hire more and more highly qualified and talented technicians. Up to a point… we also experienced first fluctuations in our workload.
To address these, we decided to provide an installation service at the customer’s site in addition to the production of switchboards. The site was usually in Denmark, and we would also pull cables in those buildings. Soon, this service became the busiest part of our business and in 2009 we already had 60 employees. We decided to sell off the workshop and move back to Szczecin. Just when we were hoping to spread our wings, the housing bubble burst in the US, pulling the Danish industry down and this caught us unprepared.
We knew that we needed a qualitative change so we decided to diversify our services, and in addition to construction business to cater also for the manufacturing, processing and intralogistics industries, oil & gas and wind power. Thanks to this, we could handle projects outside Denmark, and we became less dependent on the Danish economy. On our 10th anniversary, we were 120 people strong, 5 years later, we are 250.
Our HR specialist, Magda Wiewiórska has been with our company since 2012 and she observes, I have seen the tough times and I have seen the good times, and not once have I felt insecure about the future of the company. Our Polish-Danish DNA is simply a recipe for success. Don’t tell that to everybody 😊
Even though we add more services to the mix, our USP is still scalability of technical operations.
President of Eryk, Jens-Christian Møller says, The world around us is changing all the time and so are we. The 21st century, or 3rd millennium, is here and we are ready to tackle the digital challenges. The train we are riding on is state-of-the-art and it is going faster and faster.
Even before an economic slowdown in Europe, we are preparing for expansion to new markets: the first step is Africa – not only have we already employed 7 Nigerians and Ghanaians, and are hiring more as we speak, but we are also looking for new business opportunities in Africa. Our long-term plan is to create new, sustainable jobs in Africa – directly via our company in Ghana – Eryk A/S, and indirectly – allowing our customers to operate in those markets and allowing our African colleagues to set up their businesses locally.
The next 15 years will certainly be equally eventful at our company– initiatives and surprises are just around the corner.
