Frisomat is a family business that has been designing, producing and assembling industrial steel buildings since 1978. They now have nine affiliates around the world, and their buildings – from warehouses and aircraft hangars to support structures for solar panels – can be found in more than 100 countries. They’re building dreams in steel, with an innate sense of sustainability and innovation.
What makes Frisomat so unique in its sector?
What sets us apart from other players is that we work with cold-formed steel. It’s very light and compact. To give you an idea: a thousand square metre building fits into a standard forty foot container. So our transportation is really efficient. And also in terms of construction, our buildings are very easy to assemble: no welding, no heavy machinery such as cranes, etc.
Another benefit is that we don’t produce much waste. Hot-rolled steel is supplied in standard sizes, so there is always loss when it is cut. Since everything we make is customised, we don’t really have any surplus.
And that has everything to do with your vision of sustainability. That’s another important principle for you, isn’t it?
It certainly is. Thanks to our circular building system, we were sustainable even before sustainability was a thing. Nowadays, our entire production line is powered by solar panels. Incidentally, we produce support structures for solar panels ourselves. You can use them to cover entire car parks, for example.
And, as I said: less steel means less transport. With our unique assembly system, which is a bit like Meccano, you can even move our constructions from one place to another. For example, the building that houses the birds of prey at Pairi Daiza is ours. When they redesigned this wildlife park, they asked us for a quotation for a new complex. We thought it would be a shame to waste the material, so, in the end, we decided to dismantle the old building and move it to its new location.
You also have a strong international presence. How did that growth happen?
Well, we’ve been active internationally for quite some time now. We’ve had to be, to make our own production more profitable. The requisite market research allowed us to expand step by step into different countries. We now have nine affiliates around the world.
Africa is really important to us, for instance. We’ve got a whole team focused on the African market, and people there go and establish contacts in specific countries of focus every week. Equally, we’re building up partner networks in, for example, Great Britain, Sweden, Germany and Moldova. So as you can see, we’ve got big plans!
That’s why you need your web content and marketing materials in different languages. How do you tackle that, and what matters most to you?
The quality and tone of voice of the translations are extremely important to us. The fact that you get a second native speaker to check every translation is an important point in your favour.
And so is your accuracy when it comes to terminology, for instance. It’s absolutely crucial for our business to use the right language in every market. So for each language, we checked with our people on the ground what terms they use for specific applications. Things like ‘connector’, ‘span’, or ‘cladding’, for example. We started by going through those keywords with you so that you could create glossaries. We checked up on the first translations quite closely, but we quickly realised it was all going well.
We’ve also written a lot of texts for you. Take the new Frisomat website, for example. What was the biggest challenge with that?
In the copy for our new website, we wanted to focus on the storytelling aspect. Our baseline, ‘Building dreams in steel’, sums that up well: it’s not about the technical specs of our products but the dreams they help to achieve.
It’s about the chicory farm that has been working with Frisomat for three generations – we recently constructed a new building for them. Or the Belgian family business that is a world leader in tree bark products and relies on our expertise for modular storage solutions. These are fantastic stories, and we play a part in them. You’ve done a brilliant job of conveying that human aspect, in the case studies as well.
We wouldn’t be content with anything less! Do you have any other feedback for us?
Not right now, to be honest. We’re satisfied and happy to recommend you as a partner for all aspects of translation and copywriting.