Hospital beds pass germs from one patient to the next, and in most hospitals they are still wiped down by hand. Weber Hospital Systems, a spin-off of a family machine builder in Zwaag in the north of the Netherlands, built a cabin in which two industrial robots clean a bed with steam while a separate unit lifts off the mattress and steams it on every side. No chemical cleaning agents are used. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's March 2020 cut-off, the European Commission selected the project, called VDS (Validated Disinfection System), as one of its COVID-19-related winners, with a grant only, according to the Commission's list of selected companies. The EU contribution was €1,885,129.75 towards a total cost of €2,693,042.50, according to CORDIS.
Six years on, the machine is certified, sold and running in hospitals in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Norway, according to the company. The question this article tests is how far the result matches what the proposal promised: a 2 to 3% share of the global market for washer-disinfectors and €97.6 million in cumulative revenue by 2025.
Company file
- Legal entity
- Weber Hospital Systems B.V., KvK 70196745, active
- Founded
- 30 November 2017
- Headquarters
- De Corantijn 4, Zwaag, Netherlands
- Group
- Part of Weber Machinebouw, a machine builder founded in 1959
- People named in sources
- Erik Sierkstra (managing director, per Yaskawa); Sander Hummeling (VDS coordinator, global sales director)
- Products
- VDS-IPx4, VDS-IPx6 and VDS-CT washer-disinfectors
- Outside investors
- None found; not in the EIC Fund portfolio
- EIC project
- VDS, March 2020 cut-off, grant only, June 2020 to May 2022
- Staff and revenue
- Not public
Where Weber Hospital Systems Stands Now
The company is active. The Dutch business register lists it as active, with the corporate purpose of developing, building, distributing and maintaining "Validated Disinfection Systems" for hospitals, according to OpenKvK. North Data shows balance sheets filed for every year from 2022 to 2025, the latest on 17 July 2026; the figures in them are not available free of charge, so equity, results and staff could not be verified. In October 2024 the company also registered as a foreign entity in Norway, where the Brønnøysund Register Centre records its founding date as 30 November 2017 and no bankruptcy.
Its website, rebuilt in 2026, now sells three machines: the VDS-IPx4 for beds that cannot go through a wash tunnel, the VDS-IPx6 for machine-washable beds, and the VDS-CT for carts and trolleys. It also offers custom automation such as bed storage, vertical bed lifts and robotics for sterile supply departments, and states that the company is certified to ISO 13485, the quality standard for medical device makers. Weber Hospital Systems has announced no funding round, and the company does not appear in any of the 16 pages of the EIC Fund's list of invested companies, which is consistent with its grant-only award.
The Technology: Steam at Three Centimetres
Hospitals disinfect beds in one of two ways: with chemicals, by hand or in a wash tunnel, or thermally. A Yaskawa case study describes how Weber's machine works. The bed is identified by a code that gives its make and model, then pushed into a washing cabin. A vacuum plate lifts the mattress, which passes through a "letterbox" where steam is sprayed onto it from all sides. Two Yaskawa GP25-12 robots with steam and air lances clean the frame, getting as close as possible so the steam does not lose heat, and compressed air blows the water off. According to the final CORDIS report, the steam is applied from 3 centimetres with a contact temperature of at least 85 degrees Celsius, and the program is identical every time, so the result can be validated.
The selling point is that steam carries very little water. Modern intensive care beds contain scales, alarms and Wi-Fi and are rated only IPX4, splash-proof, so they cannot go through the wash tunnels used for IPX6 beds. Weber claims its system is "the only one suitable for processing high-end IPX4 beds" and that it achieves a 5-log reduction, killing 99.999% of bacteria on bed and mattress surfaces, in the project's CORDIS Results in Brief. These are the company's statements; no independent study of the machine's effect on infection rates was found.
The specifications have moved since the proposal. The EIC application promised a six-minute cycle; the company's website now gives cycle times "from 7 minutes" for the VDS-IPx4, with 6 litres of water and 4.5 kW per cycle, and 35 litres and 7.1 kW for the VDS-IPx6.
What the EIC Project Promised, and What CORDIS Shows
VDS ran from 1 June 2020 to 31 May 2022. CORDIS lists Gereedschap Constructie Bureau Weber BV, at the same Zwaag address, as a linked third party with €243,244.75 of the grant; the Commission's selection list names only Weber Hospital Systems. The objective on CORDIS described VDS as a prototype and set out "system optimization, validation and certification, along with pre-commercialisation activities", plus targets of a 2 to 3% global market share, cumulative revenue of €97.6 million by 2025 and employment for 133 people.
The final report is specific on the technical work. It says the production "0-model" and its software were completed, the machine was certified as a medical device under the EU Medical Device Directive, the company's quality system was certified to ISO 13485, and Agidens Belgium validated it against ISO 15883-6. The project's results page lists two patent applications of 21 October 2020, one for a mattress disinfection device and one for a robot with an elongated steam head, which North Data also records. The report adds that the company was selling the VDS "in Denmark, Norway, Germany and Switzerland in particular", had signed distributors for the United Kingdom and Hungary, and expected "10 VDS machines in use" within 24 months.
- Production model and softwareDeliveredCompleted, per the CORDIS report; product line on sale on the company website.
- Medical device certification and ISO 13485DeliveredMDD certification and ISO 13485 per CORDIS; ISO 13485 also stated on the website.
- External validation (ISO 15883-6)DeliveredValidated by Agidens Belgium, per CORDIS.
- Six-minute cycle, under 12 L and 5 kWPartly6 L and 4.5 kW, but cycles now "from 7 minutes" on the website.
- 10 machines in use within 24 months of mid-2022Late8 by the end of 2024 and 9 in 2025 on the company's list; the tenth is planned for 2026.
- €97.6M cumulative revenue and 2 to 3% market share by 2025Not achievedNo revenue figure published; nine systems is far from that scale.
- 133 jobsNot achievedNo staff figure published by the company or the register.
The technical part of the plan was delivered on time, which was the bulk of what the grant paid for. The commercial targets were never announced as met, and the company's own installation count makes the revenue target implausible, so the project counts as partly delivered.
What Weber Has Achieved Since the Award
The machine has a longer history than the company. In 2014 Weber Machinebouw, normally a metalworking business, built a one-off bed cleaning line for Erasmus MC in Rotterdam, according to Yaskawa. In November 2015 the Dutch broadcaster NOS reported that Erasmus MC would clean all beds and mattresses in what it called the first fully robotic washing line, six minutes per bed and about 50,000 beds a year; NOS did not name the builder. "We are just simple machine builders from West Friesland and no disinfection specialists," Erik Sierkstra, named as managing director, told Yaskawa, which quotes him saying that the first three machines had been installed in Denmark. The case study is undated.
"With this bed washing machine, every bed is always exactly as clean as it should be."
Erik Sierkstra, managing director, Weber Hospital Systems, in a Yaskawa case studyIn March 2021 Yorkshire-based Innova Care Concepts announced a partnership to bring the system to NHS and private hospitals in the UK, according to National Health Executive and Architects for Health. Neither names a UK hospital, and no UK installation appears on Weber's reference list.
That reference list names eight hospitals with ten systems: Nordsjællands Hospital in Hillerød (2019), two at Herlev Hospital near Copenhagen with automated storage for 120 beds (2020), Klinikum Stuttgart (2021), CHUV in Lausanne (2023), two at Erasmus MC and one at Sozialstiftung Bamberg (2024), Drammen Hospital in Norway (2025), and Kantonsspital Aarau, planned for 2026. CORDIS confirms machines in use in Denmark and Germany by May 2022, and Yaskawa confirms the first three in Denmark; searches of news and tender databases found no independent confirmation of the individual later sites.
A niche product, sold one hospital at a time
Nine systems in service and a tenth planned, across eight hospitals since 2019, is real business for a machine builder, and each one can serve a whole hospital. But it is a small fraction of a market the proposal put at €6.15 billion by 2028, and no figure for revenue, margin or staff has been made public.
Why Europe Should Care
About 4.3 million patients in EU/EEA hospitals get a healthcare-associated infection each year, and at least 20% of these are preventable through sustained infection control, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control's 2024 survey release; CIDRAP adds that 32% of the microorganisms found in documented cases were resistant to antimicrobials. Stronger infection prevention and control is one of the aims of the Council's 2023 recommendation on stepping up EU action against antimicrobial resistance. A European-made, chemical-free bed disinfection machine fits that agenda, and by design it uses no chemical disinfectants. What is missing is evidence that it lowers infection rates, which would be the strongest argument for buying one.
What the company said
A validated steam system for every type of bed, 2 to 3% of the world market, €97.6 million in revenue by 2025 and 133 jobs.
What the record shows
A certified machine, two patent applications, three product versions and nine systems in five countries by its own list. No revenue, staff or infection-outcome data is public.
The Verdict
Built and certified, still small
The EIC money did what Weber said it would on the engineering side: a prototype became a certified medical device that hospitals in five countries use. The business case in the proposal did not follow, at least not in public. With no accounts, staff figures or independent infection data available, the size of the business, and what it has done for patients, cannot be judged.
Weber Hospital Systems has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements and EU project data, linked throughout.
Sources
- CORDIS, VDS fact sheet, periodic report and results
- CORDIS, Results in Brief: disinfection robot system
- European Commission, EIC Accelerator selected companies, March and May 2020 cut-offs
- EIC Fund, invested companies
- North Data, Weber Hospital Systems B.V.
- OpenKvK, KvK 70196745
- Brønnøysund Register Centre, 934210662
- Weber Hospital Systems website and references
- Yaskawa, Cleaning hospital beds with robots
- NOS, robot wash line at Erasmus MC, 10 November 2015
- National Health Executive, UK launch, March 2021 and Architects for Health
- ECDC, 4.3 million patients affected by healthcare-associated infections, May 2024 and CIDRAP
- European Commission, Council Recommendation on antimicrobial resistance, June 2023
