Dalsem Brand Guidelines: The 1932 Westland Greenhouse Builder Now Part of GreenV

From a blacksmith’s forge to complete greenhouse projects.

Dalsem dates its origins to 1932, when, the company says, Kasper Dalsem began working as a blacksmith in the Westland, the district south-west of The Hague that it calls the traditional heart of Dutch horticulture. The trade press gives the same year: when the investment company COFRA Holding announced in January 2022 that it was buying Dalsem, Hortidaily described the firm as founded in 1932 and as a third-generation family business.

The company’s own account of the decades in between is short. It says greenhouse construction was its main activity for many years, and that it later broadened to take on both complete greenhouse projects and individual systems, such as irrigation and heating. Its climate page tells the story from another angle: what began, it says, as a boiler company for the Dutch greenhouse industry grew into a specialist in integrated climate systems. Both descriptions are the company’s own, and they stress different strands of the same business.

Today Dalsem gives its address as Den Hoorn, close to the Westland, and says its factory there covers about 60,000 square metres. It describes itself as having grown from the Dutch Westland across borders, “taking root on every continent,” and says it has completed some 1,500 projects in 52 countries; those are its own figures.

The family name stayed at the head of the company for most of its history. In January 2022 Hortidaily reported that Jan Pieter Dalsem, named in the announcement as owner and managing director, would remain in his post after the sale. By September 2026 the company’s chief executive was Frank van der Gelt, according to the announcement of its move into the GreenV group and to Dalsem’s own website.

Glass, steel, boilers and water.

Dalsem sells whole greenhouses and the systems inside them. The September 2026 announcement describes it as an internationally operating builder working on an engineering, procurement and construction basis, designing and delivering greenhouse projects to order. On its website the offer is split into the greenhouse itself, growing solutions, climate solutions, water solutions and construction, with service and spare parts after handover.

On construction, the company says it manages manufacturing as part of each project and sends its own project managers and site supervisors to work with local contractors abroad. On climate, it says its boilers are designed and produced in its own factory, and it offers a modular semi-closed greenhouse system under the name Dalsem Air. Its growing systems, it says, are designed around particular crops: high-wire crops such as tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, leafy greens, soft fruit, young plants and cut flowers. Its water systems run from rainwater collection and storage through filtration to irrigation and recirculation, and it says they are developed and produced by its own engineering and production teams.

Some of its projects are documented outside its own pages. When COFRA announced the purchase in 2022, Hortidaily’s report pointed to AppHarvest’s high-tech greenhouse at Morehead, Kentucky, of just over 24 hectares, and said it had been designed and installed by Dalsem. In the same announcement COFRA’s team praised Dalsem’s ability to manage projects from design through to installation and to develop many components in-house.

Dalsem has also been a visible presence at the GreenTech fair in Amsterdam. In January 2018 the organisers of GreenTech Amsterdam announced that the show would become annual, and said Dalsem Greenhouse Projects had been the first company to sign up to exhibit at the 2019 edition. The organisers quoted Dalsem as saying it had worked with them to make the fair more frequent, and that the result was an asset for the Dutch horticultural sector.

How greenhouse builders present themselves.

Greenhouse builders sell something most people never see from the inside: a glass roof that can run for hectares, the steel and aluminium that holds it up, and the heating, cooling, water and climate systems below it. Their pictures tend to repeat a small set of scenes. Long glasshouse roofs catch low evening light; inside, tomato and pepper rows climb toward hanging gutters, shade screens sit half-drawn under the glass, and a climate computer glows on a grower’s desk. The images sell scale and control rather than a single product.

Much of the Dutch side of the trade grew up in and around the Westland, the district south-west of The Hague that Dalsem calls the traditional heart of Dutch horticulture. Certhon gives its headquarters as Poeldijk, in the Westland, and Dalsem gives its address as Den Hoorn, close by. Dalsem traces itself to a blacksmith who started work in the Westland in 1932, and Certhon says it began as a family business in 1896; both have since passed to larger groups, and the guides in this series set out who owns what today and when that changed.

The trade meets at fairs. GreenTech Amsterdam, held at the RAI exhibition centre, said in January 2018 that it would become an annual event, and builders use their stands as showrooms: in June 2022 Certhon said its stand had a large greenhouse deck hanging from the hall’s truss, with a harvesting robot on display beneath it. Trade titles such as Hortidaily report the projects, product launches and changes of ownership that follow.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — when it began, who owns it, where it says it works and what it makes — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word. The palettes and type are our own interpretation, not the companies’ identities.

From family firm to group company.

Dalsem has changed hands twice in recent years. In January 2022 COFRA Holding announced that it would acquire all of Dalsem’s share capital, subject to merger clearance, Hortidaily reported. COFRA’s chief executive presented the deal as part of a diversification strategy that already included the purchase of Sunrock in 2020 and an investment in Intelligent Growth Solutions, while Jan Pieter Dalsem described COFRA as a long-term family-owned company with deep roots in the Netherlands.

On 2 September 2026, GreenV and Dalsem announced that they had completed an agreement to join forces, according to Hortidaily and a GreenV release carried by PerishableNews under a Waddinxveen dateline. GreenV describes itself as a group of specialised companies delivering integrated high-tech greenhouse projects; the release names members including Stolze, Prins Group, HT Verboom and Voshol. GreenV’s chief executive, Martijn Punt, said Dalsem’s arrival would let the group tailor its offer to customers worldwide, and the financial details were not disclosed.

The company’s website now carries both strands of its story. It still calls Dalsem “a true family-owned company” with almost a century behind it, and it also states plainly that Dalsem is part of GreenV, which it says gives the business stability. Its slogan on the same page is “Made to Innovate.” No logo history, house typeface or official colours are documented in the sources used for this guide.

For a design guide, Dalsem shows how a builder’s identity can rest on long continuity — a founding year, a family name and a home district — even after ownership has moved to larger groups. Compare Certhon, another Westland greenhouse builder that joined a larger owner, and Priva, a climate-control maker from the same corner of South Holland. For this guide we use a deep glasshouse green and a steel grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Dalsem’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.