The Port of Rotterdam's startup advantage

And you're building the Rotterdam Makers District now.

What does that consist of?

Yeah, well, I think if you look at the port nowadays, we've reinvented the port over and over again, ever since it started hundreds of years ago in the city center.

But the challenges we're facing now on energy transition and critical materials are really fierce.

So we need to develop an innovation district where young and talented people are attracted and challenged to help us create a more sustainable port.

And then I think that RDM and M4H, which together form our port innovation district, offer great opportunities, both in housing, in cultural developments, but also in technical background.

Because it's also linked to something you said before in an interview, where you said that the port is traditionally conservative and closed.

So now you have been working there for about 12 years.

What steps did you see to go in the direction that you just described?

Well, I think that my career at the port is really a nice illustration of how the port is changing.

When we started at RDM, our vision was mainly to develop the real estate.

And now we're much more into recognizing that the real value of an innovation district like this is not only in real estate, but in image, in how can we attract talent, in can we offer fertile ground for startups to scale, et cetera, et cetera.

There's much more value in that.

So Rotterdam has always been a port city.

But at the moment, the port is out of sight and out of mind.

So that's a bad place to be when you're in a war on talent.

So what we want to create is a really attractive place where a lot of people with new ideas think, listen, I can go to healthcare or the government or the military for now.

But now we want to put the port on the map as the biggest business opportunity there is in this area.