Every year, Damen Schelde Marine Services’ Sulzer calendars are a sought-after accessory for clients and business associates of the Vlissingen-based company. Each year, the company chooses a theme and then finds the most beautiful historical photos to go with it. This year, the 2024 calendar brought some unexpected challenges.

Rémy Quist. Rémy Quist.

The Swiss company Sulzer had been producing diesel engines since 1898, and in 1921 the company granted a licence to the Royal Schelde Shipyard to build the engines in Vlissingen. The huge engines were built in the Machinefabriek and the calendar shows beautiful images from the production halls. “Every year it becomes increasingly difficult to find beautiful photos,” explains MT member Rémy Quist. “We have been publishing the calendar since 2006 and we have already used a lot of photos. Furthermore, this year we had the theme of ‘cylinder liners’. As a company, we always have a large number of liners in stock, because they are very susceptible to wear and tear and it is one of our specialisms, so then you’d expect there to be a lot of photos as well. But that proved to be a challenge.”

Remy is responsible for coordinating the calendar for the ninth year in a row, but while before he could count on help, this time he was on his own. “We always got help from Henk Nagelhout, former employee and Schelde archivist. He had so much knowledge about the 50,000-plus photos in the archives but he sadly passed away last year. So this year, I gathered the photos on my own.”

Remy dove into the archives and the result is a calendar with a lot of variety in photos. “Henk drilled into to me for eight years about what I should look out for in the photos, but he always made the first selection himself. This year I was allowed to do that and although that gave me more freedom, it also cost me a lot more hours. But I’m happy with the calendar and I think Henk would have liked it too.”

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