Overview
Intercarpet in Aalten manufactured carpets and supplied them worldwide from production sites in Aalten and Blokzijl. At the latter site in Overijssel, production took place under the name Hartex. The company also produced artificial grass. It was a family business that operated for decades and was being run by the third generation in 2023.
Intercarpet was founded in 1960, as shown by the following report published by De Volkskrant on 10 February 1960:
Former Veneta directors establish their own carpet factory
AALTEN, 9 February — Two directors who resigned last year from Verenigde Nederlandse Tapijtfabrieken (Veneta) in Hilversum have, together with W.A. Hallen of Dinxperlo, established their own carpet company, NV Inter-Carpet. The company is currently building a new carpet factory in Aalten in the Achterhoek, which it hopes to open in May. The two former Veneta executives are director W.H.J. Brouwer of Hilversum, who worked for Veneta for almost forty years, and deputy director H. ter Burg of Soest.
Together with chairman of the supervisory board Ir J.S. Schonegevel of Nijmegen and company secretary Drs H.B. Pirik, they resigned last year because of fundamental disagreements over company policy. Although Veneta was a public limited company whose shares were listed on the stock exchange, the firm was controlled by four families from the Gooi region. They owned priority shares carrying the right to nominate board members. Apart from the Koninklijke Vereenigde Tapijtfabrieken (KVT) and Verto (Verenigde Touwfabrieken), almost the entire Dutch carpet industry was in the hands of family companies.
According to the departing directors, the background to the conflict at Veneta was that the company was not keeping sufficiently abreast of the times. As elsewhere in home furnishing, floor coverings had become increasingly subject to fashion since the war.
Demand had shifted strongly from fitted rugs to broadloom carpet covering the entire room in strips. This transition required substantial investment, while competition was becoming increasingly difficult for firms that lagged behind.
Modern company
Inter-Carpet in Aalten was to become a modern carpet factory equipped with machinery that was very new to the Netherlands, producing in particular extra-wide carpets without intermediate seams. Initially, twenty-five people were expected to find work there, with plans to expand both production and employment later. Inter-Carpet had issued share capital of 240,000 guilders, provided from the founders’ own resources. Mr Ter Burg was director; the other two men were supervisory directors.
Many Aalten residents worked elsewhere because of the shortage of industry in their own town. Local industry included copper-wire manufacturing and three cotton weaving mills. One of these, Textielmaatschappij Gebr. Driessen, had recently entered into full co-operation with Wisselink’s Textielfabrieken in Enschede, which took over sales of the output of both weaving mills. The Aalten mill was soon to be modernised and expanded.
End of the road
At the end of July 2023, it was announced that the carpet factory had filed for bankruptcy. Several reasons were given: the loss of a major customer, sharply increased energy costs and a changed production method involving a new machine that never became fully successful. At that point the company employed 67 people, around 40 of them in Aalten and the remainder in Blokzijl.
Hartex Blokzijl continues
Hartex, the production site in Blokzijl, was taken over by Condor Group, formerly its largest customer and a major player in the carpet and artificial-grass industry. Condor Group also acquired the machinery from Aalten.
The reason given for continuing in Blokzijl but not Aalten was that the Blokzijl site offered better prospects. It had newer and more modern production processes, which were also more sustainable.