With its waste collection boats, machine manufacturer Berky ensures that rivers and lakes become a little cleaner - and not just in Emsland, but worldwide. Managing Director Felix Knoll has just gained a new strategic partner in the Netherlands. The contact was initiated through the Enterprise Europe Network, which supports companies in Lower Saxony with their internationalisation.

In Jakarta, six orange-coloured boats make their way through a littered lake. They originate from the Emsland region of Germany: the mechanical engineering company Berky developed and produced them and shipped them to Indonesia. The boats have plenty to do, as the Indonesian capital is one of the world's most polluted cities: the metropolis' rivers are polluted with plastic bottles, spoilt food and industrial waste. To help manage the quantities of waste, the Berky boats are equipped with conveyor belts that collect waste underwater and transport it to the loading area. Once the boats are full, they return to shore, where mountains of rubbish are already piling up out of the river. At the end of the day, there is as much rubbish as would fit in a ten-storey house.

Berky Managing Director Felix Knoll wants to use his boats to help make the world a cleaner place. Three quarters of his waste collection boats go abroad, for example to Zambia, Nigeria, Sudan and the Philippines. The rest are used in Germany. "A clean environment is important to me," says the 33-year-old entrepreneur. "Not just for us humans, but also for plants and animals that live in and around water."

Knoll joined the management of Berky in 2016 at the age of 26. His grandfather had founded the company together with two colleagues in the 1960s. Knoll is now the third generation at the helm. The company has been able to grow strongly since then, primarily through cooperations and partnerships. Berky has tripled its turnover and number of employees and has recently entered into a strategic partnership with the Dutch drone manufacturer RanMarine.

Contact with the Dutch partner was established via the cooperation service of the Enterprise Europe Network Niedersachsen. EEN expert Nils Benne met Knoll in October 2021 as part of an innovation audit and took the opportunity to add Berky's company data to the database of the EU project Enterprise Europe Network. "Since then, we have regularly provided Mr Knoll with cooperation offers from the database," says Benne.

When he came across the Dutch company RanMarine, he sent Knoll an email: "At first I thought RanMarine was a competitor that the company should pay attention to." But quite the opposite: after a personal meeting, it was clear that Berky and RanMarine were a perfect match.

The Dutch company's drones can fish rubbish out of small lakes and canals that Berky boats cannot enter. Berky now sells RanMarine drones as an additional option for the waste collection boats: a boat costs 250,000 euros, the drone an additional 25,000 euros. Knoll is satisfied - "Together we can achieve even more - we've done everything right.“