Jan van Wees founded BV Machinefabriek van Wees in 1945 as a workshop for the local wool fabrics industry. In the first period mainly overhaul and repair, but in the years following he developed machines for wool finishing and started exporting these machines. After the succession of Jan van Wees in the seventies of last century, the company evolved to more general services for the nearby industry but kept its roots in the textile industry.
After Rien van den Aker bought the company in 1994, the focus was moved towards the technical textiles and composite industry. The first UD and Crossply line for the protective materials industry was designed and made in 1994. The Van Wees machines are a benchmark in this industry and a lot of people’s lives are saved by materials coming from Van Wees machines. In 2000, the full focus on UD started with building near production scale machines for the Research and Technology Center.
In 2006 the first machine for the prepreg industry was developed and made. In 2010, Van Wees built the Multi-axial UD Crossply machine for the R&TC. From 2012 onward there was intense focus on thermoplastic impregnation technology development.
In 2013, the founders of Eltra engineering, joined forces with Van Wees resulting in even more know-how in the field of machine- and process automation.
In 2021, Rien van den Aker, bought back all the shares, making Van Wees a family-owned business again and Kim van den Aker joined the company. In 2025, Kim bought 50 % of the shares and the plan is to have full ownership in the coming years.
With the family values and its continued focus on machine- and product development Van Wees keeps its position of Technology leader for UD and Crossply technology.