Family-owned
Family and local are keywords within Benders Sverige AB. We are a family-owned and owner-led company. Our head office is still where everything started 60 years ago, Edsvära in the municipality of Vara. The company is active and highly present in its home tract. We value close relations with other companies and contractors in our region. Even if our kernel is in Edsvära, the company operates throughout most of Sweden. Nonetheless, the family feeling is present no matter whether an employee is in our Södra Sandby factory or at our Bålsta depot.
Owned by the Bender family, the company is not stock exchange listed. Benders strives for economic durability and sustainability in every decision that is taken. Benders’ long history of stable growth, profitability and high investment levels creates security for owners, employees, customers and suppliers alike. The company is now partly owned by the third generation of Benders, a generation that is keen to safeguard what their maternal and paternal grandfathers once started. Investments, economic assets, organisation and employment relationships all bear the mark of a long-term approach and endurance.
Reinvesting in operations
For Benders, a major part of being long-term is that we annually plough back a large part of profits into company development. Examples include: investing in properties and technically advanced machines/inventories; and, acquiring companies. For the period 2011 to 2020, the Benders group had a combined profit before write-downs and after tax of SEK 1.8 billion. In the same period, SEK 1.6 billion was invested in properties, machines and inventories. The group also acquired companies for SEK 0.4 billion. Thus, Benders ploughed back into its operations virtually the equivalent of the entire group’s profits for this period.
In many cases, our long-term investments help to promote social and ecological sustainability. So that the interplay between capital and natural resources promotes sustainable development, we use meticulous analyses to evaluate our decisions. Financially, Benders has made major investments in trains and port facilities. These have already led to reductions in environmentally hazardous emissions. They will lead to even more in the future. Other investments to benefit the environment include: mounting solar cells on a wall of our Uddevalla factory; switching heating systems from oil to pellets/district heating; and, closed water systems at our facilities. By investing in new, technically advanced machines and inventories, we can efficiently produce more products of a higher quality. This boosts employee health, customer satisfaction and, by extension, also the environment. So that we can offer competitive alternatives to imported goods, Benders has invested large sums in new technologies and automation. An example of this is the investment in a new production line for granite kerb stones. The closer that products are produced to end users, the shorter the transport runs and, consequently, the less the strain on the environment.
