After having worked with his father and brothers for a number of years, Arie Baars decided to start his own shipyard in 1917. Unfortunately, luck was against him. The crisis broke out and orders were not placed. That was the reason the young shipbuilder decided to start building heavy equipment and take care of the costs himself. He mainly manufactured drywell hopper barges, hopper barges and pontoons and either hired them out or sold them. This formed the basis of ‘A. Baars Azn Exploitation of Dredgers’, better known as Baars Charter.

Specialism is a choice
After many years of success, Leen Baars, Managing Director at that time, decided to leave the shipbuilding business in 1996 . The company was going to focus entirely on hiring and selling dredgers. The coupling system for modular pontoons which was designed by Leen Baars was to be developed further. This special system was put on the market under the name Baars Confloat and has proven its reliability and flexibility in many countries.

New Managing Director
In 2011, Leen Baars has delegated his tasks to Bert Advocaat, the new Managing Director of Baars. In the past, Bert worked at Van Oord as a Project Manager. That is the reason why he knows the people and the market as no other and he has a good reputation in this branch. Richard Pijl is Assistant Director and has been working at Baars for 16 years. Maurice van Koert, who worked as a technical inspector at Windcat in IJmuiden up until recently, is responsible for the technical department.