TRANSPORTATION AND LOGISTICS
Why Belgium
- State-of-the art multimodal Infrastructure
- Geographically positioned in the heart of Europe
- 80% of European purchasing power is within an 800-km radius of Brussels
- Belgium is a gateway to 500 million European customers
Maritime history
- Maritime tradition spanning two centuries
- Adjacent to the North Sea and the English
- Channel, one of the world’s busiest sea routes
- Conti-Lines, a family-owned shipping company with close to a century of history, has been working with Japanese companies for over 70 years
“Our location and international sea and airports make our country a true strategic hub and gateway to the European market. As a result, the region around the Port of Antwerp grew into the second-largest chemical cluster in the world and Europe’s largest petrochemical center. All of this is highly appreciated by Japanese companies and plays an important role for several sectors and investors.”
Professor Gilbert Declerck, President of the Belgium-Japan Association & Chamber of Commerce
MODES OF TRANSPORT
Rail
- A pioneer in the development of the European railway network
Road
- After the Netherlands and Luxembourg, Belgium has the highest motorway infrastructure density (58 km/1,000 sq. km)
Sea
- Connected by two major rivers (Scheldt and Meuse)
- Four sea ports
- Port of Antwerp — second-largest port in Europe and 14th-largest container port in the world
- Port of Zeebrugge — International Car Operators, a 100% subsidiary of Japan’s Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), operates from here
- North Sea Port (Ghent) — Honda Motor Europe Logistics is located here
- Port of Ostend
Airports
- Six major airports
- Liege — Nippon Express recently opened an office in Belgium’s premier cargo airport
- Antwerp
- Brussels
- Brussels South Charleroi
- Kortrijk-Wevelgem
- Ostend-Bruges
CHEMICAL HUB
• Europe’s largest and the world’s second-largest integrated petrochemical cluster
• Eight of the world’s 10 largest chemical companies operate in Flanders, including Japan’s Kaneka and Nippon Shokubai
PHARMACEUTICAL HUB
• Japan’s ANA Cargo launched three direct flights per week between Brussels and Tokyo in October 2020 • Air cargo from Belgium to Japan indicates pharmaceuticals accounted for 42.4% of trade in 2019 and 44.9% during the first eight months of 2020
• Ranked No. 3 among 27 European Union states, Belgium spent €3.6 billion on pharmaceutical research in 2018
COVID-19 VACCINE MANUFACTURING HUB
• Most of the 1.3 billion COVID-19 vaccines Pfizer Tech hopes to deliver in 2021 will be produced in the factory town of Puurs, a few kilometers north of Brussels Airport
• The world’s first flight carrying COVID-19 vaccines departed Brussels Airport on Nov. 27, 2020
