XL driving plates and dragline bulkheads on demand

For temporary access and exit roads and various emergency routes during weekend closures, Swanenberg Iron Group's XL road plates provide an efficient base on and around the A2 motorway. Wooden dragline bulkheads are also in great demand for creating temporary pavement or overpasses.

For many decades, Swanenberg Iron Group has been the address for steel pipes, beams and road plates in the ground, road and hydraulic engineering, utility construction, events sector and the offshore industry. “Within our organization, with the ‘road plates’ division, we focus daily on the sale and, in particular, rental of road plates and dragline bulkheads,” Paul van Geffen of Swanenberg IJzer Groep explains. “We work with a relatively small, permanent team that takes care of the entire process from A to Z: from rental and customer contact to coordination with planning and transport. It is precisely this all-round approach that enables us to respond quickly.”

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For example, Swanenberg IJzer Groep was called in by Boskalis for the major weekend closure in November 2025. “On the Friday evening we pulled out with three trucks full of XL driving plates,” says Van Geffen. “These driving plates, with a length of 6 meters and a width of 3.45 meters, have been used for about five years now. The great advantage of these plates is that they slide less and are therefore particularly suitable for intensively used routes. In this case, they were used to construct an emergency route. We also supplied wooden dragline bulkheads in lengths ranging from 3 to 10 meters to bridge ditches, among other things. On the Sunday evening of the weekend closure, we returned with two trucks to clean up the entire route and retrieve the boards. Some remained temporarily for follow-up work.”

Our road plates are managed centrally from the depot in Schaik, from where 15 to 20 trucks travel daily throughout the Netherlands to deliver and pick up material, Van Geffen explains. “We have more than 20 different sizes of road plates, with lengths from 4 to 6 meters and widths from 1.80 to 3.45 meters. We also supply plastic plates, which are especially suitable for temporary pedestrian access routes. By now all the material has been returned, but we look forward to once again making our contribution to future (weekend) works as well.”