Priva Brand Guidelines: The De Lier Climate-Computer Maker That Began as Valk en Prins

An uncle, a nephew and a greenhouse heater.

Priva began in 1959 in De Lier, now part of the Westland municipality in South Holland, as Valk en Prins. The company says it was founded by Jan Prins and his uncle Cor Valk, and Dutch Wikipedia says the firm started by importing hot-air heaters for greenhouse horticulture.

Dutch Wikipedia sets out the background. After the Second World War, oil-fired heaters that American forces had installed in Nissen huts were taken up by Westland growers to heat their glasshouses; the lettuce grew faster and could be sold earlier, and growers eventually found that the carbon dioxide in the combustion gases was responsible. Priva’s own heaters came into use from 1962, it says.

In 1965 the company took the name Priva, joining the first letters of the founders’ surnames, Prins and Valk — Dutch Wikipedia and the company agree on the date. The name has nothing to do with Priva, the plant genus in the verbena family that shares the word on English Wikipedia.

The shift from heating hardware to control came in 1977, when, according to Dutch Wikipedia, Priva brought the first process computer for horticulture to market; the company calls it its first climate or process computer. In 1983 it moved into buildings, beginning with a building management system for the RAI exhibition centre in Amsterdam, and it opened its first offices abroad at around the same time, Dutch Wikipedia says.

From greenhouse climate to buildings.

Priva now works in two main fields. Dutch Wikipedia describes a horticulture business that develops, makes and sells climate control installations for greenhouses, including sensors for humidity, temperature and carbon dioxide, and a building automation business that supplies management systems for climate control, mainly in non-residential buildings. The company’s website adds indoor growing and energy solutions, and groups its greenhouse products under climate controllers, sensors, irrigation systems and labour and crop management.

Its product names carry the company name. For buildings the website lists Priva Blue ID, Priva Comforte, Priva Nuro and Priva Touchpoint, and for indoor growing it offers Blue ID C-line and S-line controllers. The English Wikipedia stub on the company, citing the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad in 2006, calls Priva the world leader in its field in horticulture; Dutch Wikipedia calls it the market leader in the Netherlands.

Recognition has come for the company and for its leadership. Meiny Prins, who joined Priva in 2002, was named Dutch Businesswoman of the Year in 2009, and on 25 November 2009 Priva won the first CleanTech Star from the World Wide Fund for Nature, given to companies that promote clean energy and technology, according to Dutch Wikipedia and the company.

In 2007 the company brought all its Dutch activities together at the Priva Campus in De Lier; before that it also had a site in Delft, Dutch Wikipedia says. The company describes the campus as “our home.”

Glass, film and climate.

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.

A family business with a partner.

Priva remains privately owned and describes itself as a family business. Its website calls Meiny Prins co-owner and says she led the company as chief executive for almost twenty years. In June 2024, during the celebrations for the company’s 65th anniversary, she announced Hans Peters as chief executive; she became executive chairman and, with the chief financial officer, now forms the board of the Priva Group, the company says.

Outside capital arrived in 2021. In April that year HortiDaily reported a “strategic family partnership” between Priva and the Viessmann Group, which it described as an international provider of climate solutions for homes and commercial buildings, under which Viessmann acquired a minority interest in Priva; the announcement said this would let Priva pursue its technology agenda and international growth while staying an independent family business, and let Viessmann develop climate solutions for commercial buildings and explore opportunities in horticulture. The legal magazine Lawyer Monthly reported in May 2021 that the stake was in Priva Holding B.V.

The company gives its own scale as more than 560 employees, 15 offices, more than 400 distributors and customers in more than 100 countries, with some 10,000 horticulture projects and 40,000 buildings. Its slogan is “Creating a climate for growth,” and it frames its wider aim as helping cities become “Sustainable Urban Deltas.” It says it shares its know-how through a training arm, the Priva Academy.

The company describes its own path as a change “from being a local greenhouse heating company” into an international supplier of climate control and process automation, and dates the opening of its California office to 2015. Its strategy from 2020 to 2023 was called Priva Fast Forward; since then it has worked under the heading “Connecting the Dots,” which it says covers partnerships with start-ups and technology firms, digital services for customers and partners, and a new IoT-based control platform with cloud-based software.

For a design guide, Priva shows how a heater importer’s name moved onto climate computers and building controls. Compare Hoogendoorn and Ridder, two other Dutch horticulture technology companies. For this guide we use polder green, glasshouse grey and heater ochre with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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