Wilhelmus Adrianus van Berkel was born in 1869 in Enschot, in Netherlands. Van Berkel began his career as a butcher, although his greatest passion was mechanics. Because of the constant complaints of customers on the irregularity of the slices to be cut, he had the innovative idea of creating a machine capable of cutting the slices of meat without having to resort to manual cutting with a knife: a large flywheel that activates a large concave and circular blade and a mobile carriage that move back and forth where the piece of meat to be cut is placed. In 1989, Wilhelmus Adrianus van Berkel founded his first factory in Rotterdam and from that moment, the company had a continuous rise. Berkel's flywheel slicers were more and more required internationally, and the Rotterdam building alone could not meet the ever-increasing demand; factories were built all over Europe and even in the United States, Canada and South America. During the two world wars, the company diversified its production due to the needs caused by the conflict, by manufacturing the machine tools, ships motors and seaplanes for the Dutch government. Wilhelmus Adrianus van Berkel died in 1952, but the company continued its great rise, becoming a very well-known brand in the sector thanks to the full and flower-shaped flywheel slicers.