P-Tronic: at full power

Leader in the Belgian market in the tuning box sector for turbo diesel engines, the young company P-Tronic is already eyeing exports.

English translation - original article published in French by Trends Tendances

They had to dare: they did it. Without a penny in their pockets, Philippe Heeren and his partner Jean-Michel Lodez launched their company in June 2002. At the time, the former was a director in a consultancy and event creation company, the latter worked in communication and journalism.
"We had heard about the possibility of increasing the power of turbo diesel engines by simply reprogramming their mapping," explains Philippe Heeren, managing director. "The idea immediately appealed to us, and we embarked on the adventure."
For post-factory engine reprogramming, two solutions exist. You can install an EPROM, an irreversible process that involves integrating an electronic chip into the engine's original mapping, but which does not take into account the tolerance limits set by manufacturers. Another possibility: a tuning box, which is placed downstream of the ECU, from which it receives the signal defined by the manufacturer. In the latter case, the received information is analyzed, electronically modified, then sent back to the injection pump, the rail or directly to the injectors, depending on the car models.

Stock without orders

Result: although the car's speed remains unchanged, it gains in torque, power and driving comfort. This is the type of performance chip that car manufacturers use to present models of different power levels, based on an identical engine. "Without startup capital, we had to develop our chip, then convince suppliers to trust us... and accept to be paid later. We were thus able to build up a stock of parts... without any orders!"
Then came the stroke of luck: the editor-in-chief of Diesel Mag magazine offered them a page of advertising. A boost that triggered the first order for P-Tronic tuning boxes by the French company Eurofac.
"This order allowed us to attack the Belgian market, by concentrating on dealerships and positioning ourselves solely as specialists in this type of product, not as generalists."
Today, the company sells some 400 chips per month (average unit price: €750), mainly to 400 dealers in Belgium and Luxembourg, and is seriously considering conquering new export markets.
"Besides France, Luxembourg and Italy where we are already present, we will tackle the English markets – where our local correspondent is the former vice-president of Psion – Swedish, Spanish, where we are about to sign an agreement with an importer, and Danish. We have high hopes for this last market, which seems very promising to us in the medium term."

Frédéric Moser