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55,000 m², 60,000 pallets, 250 jobs... These are some figures that illustrate the importance of the investment by the logistics group Weerts in Houdeng-Goegnies. This morning, the first two storage halls were officially inaugurated. The Belgian group emphasizes the innovative and sustainable aspect of its establishment in the Garocentre industrial zone.

90 loading docks, this illustrates the scale of the Weerts group's presence in the Idea industrial zone.

A guided tour inside one of the halls allows you to grasp the enormity of the storage possibilities: it is equivalent to about 11 football fields. And it's not just the ground area that will allow for storage: pallets can be stacked up to 13 meters high.

In the more formal part, the president of the intermunicipal corporation expressed delight at the speed with which the project has been completed. The first contacts were made three years ago and the first stone was laid a year ago.

Moreover, the investment is intended to be sustainable and, according to the words of the Belgian group's management, sustainable. For example, the building meets the strictest environmental standards, emphasizes Didier Weerts, CEO of WSC.

"It's the highest level environmentally that we can achieve at the moment. It's the choice of materials for the building, it's the fact that we have solar panels all over the building. It's the fact that rainwater is collected for sanitation, it's the electrical charging stations (we install twice the legal requirement). And it's also the fact that we will install here, in front of the building, an industrial battery park."

Weerts Supply Chain, the logistics branch of the group, has also invested in the multimodality (water, road, rail) of Garocentre.

This is how 5 round trips per week will be made to the port of Antwerp, which is only 20 hours away by navigation from Houdeng.

Ultimately, Weerts will create 250 jobs at its Louvain-la-Neuve site, bringing the total number of people employed at the Garocentre logistics site to almost 2,000.

Source: Antenne Centre TV