Robert Pol is 62 years old, married, and the father of thirty-year-old twins. He works as a senior innovator at Van Aalsburg, a family business now in its third generation. “A wonderful title,” he calls it himself. His work? Developing new products based on willow.
“When I was six years old, I already wanted to become a forest ranger.” He studied land and water management, worked in the dredging industry for years, and eventually returned to his original interest. “From a young age, I had a strong interest in forestry and agriculture. I thought that was fantastic.”
Planning Beyond a Lifetime Instead of in Quarters
Van Aalsburg is not structured like most companies. It does not think in quarterly results or exit strategies. It thinks in generations. Robert traces the roots easily. Grandfather Van Aalsburg and founder of the company had thirteen children; six sons entered the business. Today, a third generation is stepping in. “We have 58(!) cousins,” he says. “So there’s plenty of choice to keep the company in the family.”
This scale of continuity shapes everything. “We are not a company that will be sold in the short term. We are here for generations.” That perspective changes the questions you ask. Planning stretches to 30 years as a minimum, often longer. When planting a plot of trees, the horizon extends decades ahead: what will the climate look like then? Will rainfall patterns have changed? Should different species of willows be planted next time?
It is a mindset that feels almost radical in a world accustomed to immediacy. Yet here, it is simply how things are done.
The “Bamboo of Northwestern Europe”
At the heart of the business lies the willow. Fast-growing, resilient and versatile, Robert calls it “the bamboo of Northwestern Europe.” Historically, willow was everywhere in the Netherlands. Farmers used it for tools, roofing, even wooden shoes . Over time, those applications faded. But at Van Aalsburg, the material never disappeared. It evolved.
Today, the company manages around 170 hectares of willow production forests, alongside maintaining another 100 to 150 hectares annually for conservation organisations such as Staatsbosbeheer and Natuurmonumenten. Their work spans landscape restoration, ecological infrastructure and water management: woven willow structures stabilising riverbanks, floating paths, underwater habitats for fish.
Sometimes, innovation begins almost accidentally. For example, someone suggested putting willow fences online. “Now we have five teams installing them year-round for private customers,” Robert says. What started as a small idea became a whole new branch of the business.
Ten years ago, they began developing jute geotextiles to replace the plastic geotextiles currently in use in coastal and bank protection works. In collaboration with the sixth-generation family-run weaving firm Zwartz from Oldenzaal, they have developed jute geotextiles that are just as strong as plastic geotextiles. However, without the emission of microplastics and the costs associated with clearing away the plastic geotextiles at the end of their life.
Carbon Storage, Hidden in Plain Sight
Much of Van Aalsburg’s work remains invisible, literally. It happens beneath the waterline. “The majority of the wood we produce is used underwater,” Robert explains. There, something remarkable happens.
Research into nearly century-old structures showed that about 70% of the wood remained intact. “That gave us proof: as long as it stays underwater, the CO₂ remains stored.” This discovery opened the door to a new kind of value. Through Climate Cleanup and its carbon certification platform Oncra, the company has issued more than 6,000 carbon certificates. The revenue does not just reward the past, it funds further research into durability and sustainable applications.
From Natural Medicine to Future Housing
The future of the willow is still unfolding. One avenue leads back to something ancient: salicin, a compound found in willow bark and long known as a natural precursor to aspirin. “If you have a headache, you can chew a willow twig and get the same effect,” Robert says. It is a reminder that innovation does not always mean inventing something new, sometimes it means rediscovering what was already there.
Other applications point forward. Together with partners, Van Aalsburg is developing a cement-bonded panel made of nearly 90% willow. The result is a fire-resistant building material that could support entire houses. “But then you have to move from brick to timber construction,” Robert notes.
It is not just a technical shift, but a cultural one. There are experiments with willow-based foundations for roads and homes, combinations with reed, and even trials using willow to help remediate polluted soils. Because the tree grows so quickly, it may play a role in reducing contaminants like PFAS, an idea currently being tested in pilot fields.
Learning from What Was Almost Lost
For all the forward-looking work, Robert keeps returning to the past. “Every farmer used to have a small wood of willow, what we called ‘convenience wood’,” he says. It was local, practical and multifunctional. That landscape has largely disappeared, replaced by more specialised, industrial systems. His hope is not to turn back the clock, but to reintroduce that logic. More willow. More local production. More materials that grow rather than deplete. “For biodiversity, for sustainability, and for all the products we can make from it,” he says.
There is also a broader ambition: that others will join in. “We are the only company doing this right now,” he says. “It would be good if more parties started cultivating willow or similar crops as raw materials. The Netherlands would benefit enormously.”
A Different Kind of Progress
The forest is not just something to protect. It is something to build with, to learn from, and to rely on. And if there is a lesson in that, it is this: the future may depend less on how fast we move, and more on how far ahead we are willing to see and plant accordingly.