Episode 43: Van der Graaf (VDG) talks drum motor innovation

On this episode of “Drilling Deeper,” P&Q managing editor Jack Kopanski is joined by VDG’s Matt Lepp. The duo take a deep dive into the current state of the market and the challenges facing the industry today, as well as VDG’s experiences navigating the economic landscape so far in 2025.

Lepp, technical account sales manager for the heavy industry at VDG, offers a look at the broader economic state, exploring how recent tariffs are impacting operations and what’s behind ongoing supply chain disruptions and labor shortages. These challenges set the stage for a closer look at VDG’s unique approach to overcoming industry hurdles.

Listeners will get an inside look at VDG’s backstory, their commitment to local manufacturing and the real-world benefits their GrizzlyDrive drum motors provide – including reduced energy costs, lower maintenance needs and improved safety. Lepp also highlights how the GrizzlyDrive series is shaping the future of the industry through innovative technology.

Hear several first-hand accounts about how VDG’s drum motor has aided in operators’ success. Partners like Carmeuse, whose engineers embraced new technology to stay ahead, and mobile plant OEMs such as Masaba, Mellott and Terex are streamlining plant designs with VDG drives. Additionally, discover how Morton Salt transformed its Bahamas plant by embracing VDG solutions to address maintenance and staffing challenges in a remote setting.

Whether you’re an industry veteran or just curious about the latest in drive technology, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical examples. Don’t miss it!

For 108 years, Pit & Quarry magazine has been the premier monthly aggregate processing information source. Through multiple platforms, we deliver the very latest in equipment and technology news and information that is critical for safely achieving the highest level of efficiency and profitability. Editors Kevin Yanik and Jack Kopanski cover the market in print, online and through e-newsletters. As respected industry insiders, they moderate the annual Pit & Quarry Roundtable & Conference and speak at industry conferences and meetings.

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Transcript

Jack Kopanski: Welcome into this episode of Drilling Deeper. I am Jack Kopanski, managing editor of Pit & Quarry and co-host of Drilling Deeper. On this episode, we are joined by Matt Lepp of Van der Graaf (website↗). On this episode, I talk with Matt about the current state of the economy, the effects tariffs are having on business and challenges the industry is facing, including equipment supply chains and labor shortages. We also get a little bit of background into Van der Graaf as a company and the work that it has done in the industry.

We talk on the company’s focus on local manufacturing and the benefits that its GrizzlyDrive Drum Motor series provides, including reduced energy costs, reduced maintenance and increased safety. And finally, Matt shares some success stories of the GrizzlyDrive series in action, including case studies looking at how it has helped Carmeuse and their engineers get the foresight to look at new technology, how mobile plant OEMs like Masaba, Mellott and Terex are using drum motors to streamline plant designs, and how Morton Salt is making their Bahamas plant entirely VDG to eliminate maintenance needs and address staffing and parts issues in remote areas. There’s plenty more we talk about in this week’s episode. Check it out right now.

Interview Starts

JK: Welcome in to this episode of Drilling Deeper. Today, we are joined by Matt Lepp, technical account sales manager for the heavy industry market at Van der Graaf. Matt has been instrumental in expanding the company’s reach by serving as both a sales and technical leader for mining and aggregate customers across North and South America. With over 18 years of experience at VDG, Matt has worked with the engineering, technical service and sales departments, bringing a strategic, evidence-based and customer-centric perspective to the role. Matt, thanks so much for joining us today.

Matt Lepp: Hey Jack, always a pleasure.

JK: You know, we’ve got a lot to sort of get into. I’m excited to hear some of the insights, not only with what Van der Graaf has going on and sort of the state of VDG, but I think we’ve got to start on, obviously, sort of a talking point really throughout the industry. Just sort of how the current market is, what you’re seeing from your perspective at VDG, what your experiences like have been so far. You know, we’re about halfway through the year, so how have the first six months treated you guys from sort of an economic perspective?

ML: Well, the first six months have been positive. Now, ’24 ended very well. ’24 was a great year. ’25 getting into it, it started strong. I think it’s been positive, but with a healthy dose of caution is probably the best way to describe it. So we’re seeing a lot of activity, a lot of things going on in the industry, but I think a lot of producers out there are exercising a bit more caution than they might normally, especially with the larger capital purchases.

JK: Absolutely. You know, with some of that caution, what kind of a role or maybe what effects are you seeing some of the tariffs having that have been put into place over these first few months of the year? What kind of an impact is that having on maybe some of the sentiment in the industry?

ML: Well, I can tell you as a manufacturer, as an American-based manufacturer, we still rely on a global supply chain for our product. There are simply components that are not available in America that we have to source, and name-brand components: SKF bearings, things like that. When it comes to the producer side of it, I can understand, especially with major equipment purchases, where very significant price differences can occur between ordering a product and it landing and them taking delivery. And again, even for an American-made product, where significant prices to certain materials and components to build it may happen. So I think that’s, again, where a lot of that caution is really coming from.

What I think is going to change that is as a new US administration starts hammering out more and more trade deals, I know one happened a few weeks ago with the UK, we’re seeing the Canadian government interfacing a lot more with the Americans now as well. I think as those deals start to get hammered out, and a clear path and a stable path forward is made, I think we’re going to see a lot of that apprehension disappear, that comfort level come back, and then I think we’re going to see what I’m hoping will be the latter half of this year take off more and more than it has so far.

JK: Excellent. Yeah, definitely some optimism there. Glad to hear it. You had touched on something, obviously being in the position VDG is, having that global supply chain, obviously a vastly different landscape than in 2020 in the world of COVID and in the years following. But can you talk a little bit about the current state of the equipment supply chain, how VDG is seeing it? And another issue we’ve been hearing a lot of manufacturers, producers, dealers alike, talking about being labor shortages. How are those two things kind of affecting VDG right now?

ML: Well, we’re doing our best with the supply chain side of it. A lot of our products … All of our products really being shipped in the US are being made in the US now. From that, that’s caused us to explore a lot more US-based supply chain components. But there are, like I said previously, there are still components that Van der Graaf faces, and I’m sure a lot of other OEMs out there listening are facing, where it’s just not possible to get those components in the US, made in the US. Now, while it might be made in US, the material might come from outside, for example, which, again, is going to have tariffs imposed and so on. So, it’s definitely creating some problems, but like I said, once these trade deals get hammered out and the future is more secure and planned, then I think that’s going to alleviate.

Facing somewhat of the same labor pool we were seeing during and after the pandemic. There’s been a shift, I think, in industries where a lot of people are going, what they’re doing. It’s caused us to search broader and broader areas for people right now, but I think we’re solving it’s just become more difficult than it has been in years past.

JK: I got you. I got you. I understand. So let’s maybe take a step back a little bit. Obviously, VDG is a company that has more than made a name for itself, a very well established brand in the industry, puts itself out there a lot. For those that maybe are less familiar with the company, can you give us a little bit of information, maybe a little backstory on VDG? You know, what the company is, what it does, and sort of some of the benefits that VDGs products provide?

ML: So in short, I mean, Van der Graaf started back in Holland about 76 years ago, and then we started North American operations. We actually just hit our 40th anniversary last month. We manufacture drum motors, so the internally driven head pulleys to drive conveyor belts, and that’s all we do. That’s the only product we put out there. Now, we deal with a number of markets, not just the heavy industry and mining and quarry and things like that. You’ll see us in food applications, airports, post and parcel distribution centers, basically anywhere there’s a conveyor. Right now, this market does represent a very large segment of our business, and it’s one of our fastest growing segments as well. So yeah, we manufacture the drum motors. We manufacture them … we’ve got two plants in North America. One in Brampton, Ontario, so just outside of Toronto. Another one in Shelby Township, Michigan, so just outside of Detroit. And it’s all done locally here. We do our own machining in house, our own lagging, cut our own gears, wind our own stators. Absolutely everything’s done by us.

JK: Excellent. Well, first off, congratulations on 40 years in North America. Very exciting about that. I know one of the hallmarks, and correct me if I get the number wrong, one of the hallmarks of the Van der Graaf drum motor is the 80,000 hours of maintenance-free service. Can you talk a little bit more about that ability to reduce maintenance, reduce energy costs, increase safety and just sort of some of the benefits that this product can provide?

ML: Well, right. So, a drum motor has always been a cost of ownership product. We provide a lot of benefits that will improve your processes, increase your uptime and minimize your maintenance and your downtime. So, you touched on an 80,000 hour maintenance interval. We do that by … Well, the nature of a drum motor, your motor and your gearbox, your whole drive package is inside the drum. Because of that, we can put the entire system in an oil bath instead of relying on grease points and things like that. So, we’re able to extend the maintenance interval. So I’m able to give you a drive that you can put in a mobile or fixed plant where it doesn’t get touched for 80,000 hours.

When we do that, and by nature of our design, we also get rid of a lot of the common wear parts and failure parts that you’d see in a conventional drive. So we’re getting away from V-belts and chains, couplings, pillow block bearings, components that are prone to wear and either failure or planned replacement over time. So because of that, we also see energy savings of about 30 percent getting rid of those components, all of which will create losses in the system. We can see energy savings 20-30 percent, sometimes even more in some cases. So when we look at your reduced maintenance, which means less man hours involved in maintenance, less materials involved in maintenance, less downtime, coupled with some fairly significant energy savings, overall your cost of ownership to run a Van der Graaf versus a conventional motor gearbox V-belt setup is substantial.

And one other nice thing there, too, is safety. That’s something we’re seeing more and more producers look at these days. MSHA and OSHA are not becoming any less stringent in their regulations, and at the end of the day, we all want to go home healthy and happy. Going to a drum motor, we remove the V-belts, the chains, like I said, those pinch points, we remove the necessary guarding for them. We also get rid of rotating shafts. With a drum motor, there’s actually nothing inside the conveyor frame that moves.

At the same time, and I didn’t actually realize this until a few years ago, I was talking to one of our long term customers and he brought up a good point. He goes, “Well, you know, think about it, if you have one of these motors in, let’s say, the end of a stacker or in a confined space or up on an elevated piece of equipment, with a conventional drive, every time somebody has to go and work on those pieces of equipment they’re now working at heights, working in a confined space and so on, and the potential for incidents multiplies in those situations.” Whereas with a drum motor, if I can put it up at the end of the end of the stacker, I don’t even have to look at it for five years, just that alone increases the overall safety pretty substantially.

JK: Excellent. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like the benefits there are obviously very palpable, very recognizable, sort of right off the bat. Yeah, Matt one of the things you kind of hit on there that I think is, you know, maybe sort of important to convey, no pun intended, that it is sort of a cost of ownership item. And I know there may be sort of an idea or narrative of, sort of the upfront price of a Van der Graaf drum motor, and then obviously having that kind of pay off over time. Can you kind of talk about that compared to maybe some other alternatives in the market, and how that initial cost kind of stacks up?

ML: Well, initial cost, and some preconceived notions or conceptions about initial costs to kind of put those to bed, our products are not exorbitantly more. There’s a lot of notions out there, “Well drum motors are two, three, four, five, six times the price of conventional setups,” and they’re not. On the smaller drives, what you might see on a mobile plant, we’re usually within 10-15 percent of what you would pay for a conventional drive setup. You know, if you look at a bare conveyor frame to put up a conventional setup on versus us. But at the same time, I worked with one of our distributors last fall, we did a price study, conventional drive setup versus ours on 150 horsepower drive. So definitely a larger fixed plant application, and we were within about 1.5 percent. So at that point, it’s a wash. And that’s just on sticker price.That’s not yet looking at cost of ownership and the savings there that we talked about.

JK: Gotcha. Yeah, no, I appreciate that insight, because I think that is something that can kind of get maybe inflated a little bit, is that initial cost of an item, like a drum motor. So that’s great to hear, sort of where you guys are at, and that it’s maybe not as exorbitant as one might think.

ML: Well, and a bit of it too is, and I want to be clear here, what Van der Graaf puts into the market now too is our GrizzlyDrive series. So this is a series that we developed about over the last six, seven, eight years, a line of motors specifically for mining and aggregate. Before that, our motors were, at the time, maybe bit of a one size fits all approach, something like that. Us and other manufacturers as well. So there are some preconceived notions out there about drum motors 15, 20 years ago.

We’ve put a lot of effort in these days, and we have some great white papers and so forth available on our website. And I think you’ve published some stuff as well that shows the new drum motor, the new Van der Graaf drum motor. The drum motors that we’re putting into the market today, in the last several years, are leaps and bounds in technology and reliability and robustness beyond what we were seeing before.

JK: Excellent. That’s great to hear. You mentioned that new GrizzlyDrive drum series, that kind of leads directly into my next question. In planning for this, we had kind of talked about some real world applications, some case studies, if you will. And I know we have a couple examples that you want to talk about. Can you just kind of dive into maybe some of those instances where the GrizzlyDrive Drum Motor has really shown operations, or even manufacturers implementing the GrizzlyDrive Drum Motor into their products, has really shown those benefits and shown the results firsthand?

ML: Well, sure. We’ve seen a number of those over the years. I mean, first and foremost, mobile plants. Every quarry has them. We’ve seen a lot of interest over the past several years from several of the major mobile equipment manufacturers to use drum motors, either as a rule across all different series of equipment, or in certain applications where they’re really seeing the benefits of the compact design – under screen, belts, things like that – where they’ve typically before had problems fitting in motors and gearboxes into very tight constraints. Putting a drum motor in there simplifies the design, makes your engineering a lot better. Plus, they’re able to pass down a lot of benefits to their customers, the end user, with all the maintenance and reliability advantages.

We’re also seeing a lot of interest on the fixed plant side. One of our larger customers, larger users, I should say, of our big motors, Carmeuse Lime & Stone. They’ve got a number of facilities around the Great Lakes, including the world’s largest open pit limestone mine just outside of Rogers City. They’re a great example of a company that’s put the work into finding new solutions. They approached us back in 2016, as well as some other equipment manufacturers, about redoing a number of conveyors that were using motors from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, things like that. And they realized it was time for an upgrade. Their engineers also said, “Well, it’s been a while, why don’t we see what else is out there?” And they did, and they looked at us and some other drives. They tried a bit of everybody, and now they’re running many, many drives up to 350 horsepower using Van der Graaf drum motors with some pretty great success. So that’s a great example of a user … Again, and something we see in this industry that as an OEM can be a little, I don’t wanna say frustrating, but is a mentality of what we’ve been doing it this way for years and years and years and it works, why do we wanna change?

Well, every day, equipment’s improving, processes are improving, we’re finding ways to do things better. So, it’s great to see companies do that. Another great example, Morton Salt, probably seen their products around somewhere, either on your table or on your driveway. They have a plant down the Bahamas, great big solar salt generation plant. They’re actually drying sea water to make salt. They’ve been endeavoring over the past several years to make that plant virtually all Van der Graaf, simply because of the ease of operation and the lack of maintenance. Especially in a remote location like that, if you need a new V-belt and it’s not on the island, it’s going to take a week or two. So they’ve definitely seen some serious advantages there that are helping them every day in their operations.

JK: Yeah, that’s fantastic. As a manufacturer, as someone obviously so close to these operations, or to the mobile plant OEMs, how satisfying and how maybe – I don’t know if rewarding is too strong of a word – does that have to be seeing your piece of equipment – especially in a case like VDG where, again, you guys do the drum motor, and you sort of have mastered your craft, if you will – seeing your equipment go off and really provide these people with all the benefits that you guys put the time and effort into developing into this product.

ML: Oh, it’s fantastic. I mean, as an OEM, to see someone interested in it, and then interested enough to make the purchase, put it into their operation, and then trust our product to allow them to make their product and service their customers, that’s a great compliment. And then when we see customers start to do that more and entrust either entire process systems or entire plants to our product, it’s a fantastic compliment as an OEM to be … best word I think is trusted.

JK: Yeah, that’s certainly a huge thing in this industry. Matt, you’ve already touched on a lot here. You know, you gave some history on Van der Graaf, the history on the drum motor, how you guys are sort of mastering that. Those case studies are such great examples of that piece in action. Just one final question I have for you: For someone maybe deciding if they want to go a drum motor, if they want to go another route, maybe stuck in the middle, why Van der Graaf? If someone is sitting there looking at a Van der Graaf drum motor, looking at some other options, why should they choose a Van der Graaf, GrizzlyDrive Drum Motor?

ML: Fantastic question, and what you’re asking here is exactly how we go to market. Van der Graaf, we put a tremendous focus on education. Drum motors, everybody knows what a gearbox and a motor with a V-belt, what it is and how it works. Drum motors, I mean, the technology has been around since the ’40s. This is not something new. This is not something started in the last few years. It’s a product, it’s a solution that it’s tried, tested, true, it works fantastic, but not a lot of people in general know about it. So we put a lot of emphasis on education, and we’re happy to come do that. I spend half my life out on the road getting in front of customers anywhere from one one guy in a trailer at a site, to a lot more than that, trying to get people educated in how … not only what drum motors are, but how they can help and how they can help making your process better.

So I mean, to answer your question, it’s simple. We’re all about reducing your cost of ownership, which is minimizing your downtime, maximizing your uptime, and when it is down, minimizing the cost that goes into getting it back up. Like I said, 80,000 hour maintenance interval. All you’re doing at 80,000 hours is changing the oil. That’s it. There are no internal wear parts to our drives. Even our lagging. You know, lagging, ours or anybody else’s, it is a wear part. Our iron grip lagging series, our metal, which is a metal bar reinforced either hot bonded rubber or hot bonded ceramic. We’ve extended the life of the lagging as much as we can. And then we’ve also, through this design, given customers the ability to change lagging in the field, and if they do have a lagging failure for whatever reason, to get their system back up and running that much faster.

JK: Yeah, that’s excellent, Matt. Hopefully our conversation here serves as another point of education for those curious about drum motors. So, a lot of great info. Matt, just want to thank you again for your time. A lot of good stuff. For those that might be curious or have any questions, how can they find you? How can they find out more about VDG?

ML: Well, we’re on the internet, vandergraaf.com. Feel free to reach out there. All of our emails and phone numbers and so forth are on there. I’d also encourage people to go and check out our YouTube channel(↗). We have some great case studies. I know I touched on Carmeuse earlier. We’ve got a great case study from there, some animations and things like that, some great educational tools. But the big thing is, if you’re interested or have questions, by all means, please reach out to us. We’re always happy to help.

JK: Excellent. Well, thanks again, Matt. A lot of good stuff, and best of luck to you and Van der Graaf the rest of this year and beyond.

ML: Well, Jack, I appreciate it very much.

Interview Ends

JK: Thanks again to Matt Lepp, technical accounts sales manager for heavy industry at Van der Graaf. A lot of good information there. For more information about Van der Graaf or the GrizzlyDrive Drum Motor, go to vandergraaf.com.

On the next episode of Drilling Deeper, Kevin Yanik and I sit down to talk about the July issue of Pit & Quarry, which is our annual Dealer Issue. We’ll get into several of the feature stories that will be featured in that month’s issue, and Kevin shares a couple interviews he has with Bryant Fazer and Micah Tysver. You won’t want to miss it! Until next, time I’ve been Jack Kopanski for Drilling Deeper. We’ll see you later.