Finding her passion

In Tank Storage Magazine’s coverage of the ‘Women in Tanks’ series, Wiko’s Whitney Helbers talks us through her journey from a little girl transfixed by Rotterdam’s industrial lights to selling industrial services to tank companies

WHITNEY HELBERS is the first to admit that her interests as a child were not necessarily what might be expected.

‘I was always fascinated by industry. When my parents asked me what I wanted to do, I didn’t choose petting animals at the petting zoo, but going for a drive through the industrial area of Rotterdam when it was dark and the lights and flames were clearly visible. I also loved playing with cars and tools instead of dolls,’ she says.

With her late teens came a driving licence and her first car, but why just drive it? Helbers loved to tinker with it. Amongst other things, she ripped open the doors to wire in a brand new sound system and once dismantled and rebuilt the engine completely. This love of the technical almost inspired her education, but not quite.

‘At a certain age in the Netherlands you have to choose the direction of your education. I was thinking I should do something technical like car repairs, but my parents said it might be better to do something else rather than work in a garage and it might be good to have more knowledge in other areas,’ says Helbers.

They encouraged her to choose something which included economic and business studies which would help should she decide to start her own business, so she instead chose economics management for the hospitality industry.
‘It was very interesting, but I missed the technical side of things,’ she says.

THE FIRST STEP INTO INDUSTRY

During her studies, Helbers was working in a restaurant and got friendly with a man and his wife who were regulars there. The man worked in ‘ceramics’, and ended up offering Helbers a job.

‘I thought he meant cups and pots and things,’ says Helbers. ‘Two days later I went to the company and he showed me that it was ceramic insulation like blankets and refractories. I was in the warehouse and I thought it was quite interesting because there was a lot going on and a lot happening. Four days after the start I was working there.’

She went back to school one day a week to finish her education but decided against further education to learn on the job. As she points out, ‘there is no education for the refractory industry’, and she was happy.

‘My first customer visit I think was in one month. I didn’t like just working in the office, that’s not my kind of thing. We visited an aluminium smelter, the biggest in Holland. I just wanted to stay there! It was so interesting seeing how things are things are put together, and how to make a product,’ says Helbers. ‘The nice part of it was because I am a woman and I was very young at the time, everyone took the time to show me around and show me how the process worked.’

In her time at her first company she got to know various industries including petrochemicals, steel and incineration, and switched to another company, not because she was unhappy, but because she wanted to get more experience.

‘At each company you learn a little bit more. I thought it would be nice if I can expand that part of my network a little bit. You have a network and it grows every year, but if you already have lots of contacts in the same industries it’s no longer so exciting. I got in contact with one of my customers who bought high temperature insulation from me but was active in scaffolding as well. This was the previous company where I worked. It was the same thinking and the same customers but there were new industries like tank building and shipping so I had more to explore and to visit,’ she says.

INTO TANKS

That proved to be the start of Helbers’ interest in the tanks industry.
‘It was not a specific choice to go into the tanks industry. It’s not that I was driving everyday by a tank and thinking, ‘oh I have to go there.’ It was more that I was interested to learn more to explore more about the markets. I already knew a lot of companies who were tank builders or who ran storage terminals and they were nice,’ she says.

One fondly remembered experience was at Vopak Vlaardingen in the Netherlands, when she was commercial manager for her then-employers. She was acting as project manager for work insulating eight tanks, including the insulation itself and necessary equipment like scaffolding and cranes.

‘Like every project, it had to be on time and in budget, but the challenge here was that the tanks were so close to one another. There were lots of tanks in a small tank pit with no room for storage of materials to do the works,’ says Helbers. ‘I was there for seven or eight months every day, so that’s where I got a bit of love for that terminal. Vopak taught me a lot about the tank storage business.’

The tank industry, she says, is like a village. The terminal operators and the contracts all work together as a team, which results in great job satisfaction.

AN INFLUX OF WOMEN

When Helbers first started in the storage tanks industry, women were a rarity.
‘If you were working on a terminal 10 years ago there were no women at all, or maybe one, and that was the cleaner,’ she says.

Attitudes towards her onsite have varied, although outright discrimination is not something Helbers feels she has particularly suffered from in her career. In the early stages, she believes being young and a woman may even have helped her learn more quickly, whether from those who went out of their way to show her how things worked or explain things to her, or whose who took a slightly different attitude.

‘Some people didn’t take me 100% seriously I don’t think, because sometimes I’ve had questions from guys I think they’ve never asked anybody before, just to see if I know the answer to really complicated, technical questions. I would say: ‘Just wait a minute, I’ll call the office and ask them that question.’ I won’t answer if I don’t know the answer. That was a test for me but also it helped me to learn,’ says Helbers.

She has now been so long in the business that nobody makes the mistake of thinking she doesn’t know something anymore, and women now are much more visible.

‘It’s nice to see more women entering the technical field. Young women who have wonderful engineering jobs, who have a passion for the profession. 

Women who are outside fixing something or doing a big job with their team. And that this is also accepted and respected by everyone,’ says Helbers, adding: ‘It starts with the security, with a woman there, and then you’re working on the terminal and there are women working outside, especially feminine women. I think that is great. I think it’s more accepted for women to be in terminals, and also in higher management roles, you see more women every day.’

Many of the barriers to women in the industry now, she thinks, are often more to do with the perception that women will be treated differently than the reality on the ground.

FINDING HER HOME 

Helbers is in no doubt that she has found her niche in life, both working in the tank industry, and in particular, at her current company, Wiko Isolatietechniek & Steigerbouw, which provides industrial services and equipment such as scaffolding and insulation. She joined the company in 2021 as the sales manager.

‘I go to tank storage terminals, whether they are building new ones or whether they have to be painted or they’re making adjustments, or replacing insulation. Of course, for that they need scaffolding. Next to that we are in contact with the tank builders and the construction companies. For example, you have piping on the tanks and most of the time that’s insulated. I visit the existing customers and talk to them but there are also new projects and new companies,’ she says. 

For Helbers, starting work at Wiko felt like ‘coming home’. Wiko is a family business with 150 employees, all, she says, with a passion for their work, equal to her own.

‘If you work in a place when everybody likes scaffolding and everybody likes insulation and everybody likes tanks and everyone is happy if something is finished in time, it makes you really satisfied. I think if you have such a feeling with your colleagues or at the company that you work for then then your work is not work anymore,’ she says.