General info about Venlo
The Venlo region has a long and sound tradition in trade. The Romans recognised the area's strategic location in the first century a.d. Venlo's strategic location is no less significant today. Holland is literally the gateway to Europe, and Venlo is a primary point of goods-handling within that gateway.
Venlo is located on the very edge of Germany's industrial heartland. The city enjoys direct infrastructural connections to the North Sea ports of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Antwerp, and to the international airports at Maastricht/Aachen, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam and Eindhoven.
With this central location, the direct infrastructural connections to major European economic centres and the terminal facilities for nearly any type of combined traffic, Venlo area has emerged as one of the primary logistic centres for the European market.
Venlo businesses are European leaders in value-added logistics. Services range from packaging, re-packaging and assembly operations to virtually any activity that reduces costs while streamlining the handling, storage and distribution of products. A key element in this is the Venlo Trade Port concept.
With a total area of 800 hectares, Venlo Trade Port is the centre of combined industrial/logistics activities in the southeast Netherlands. It is an expansive, ultra-modern commercial development location, that combines integrated road and rail transhipment facilities with a state-of-the-art telecommunications infrastructure. It is a highly flexible business park designed to international standards.
Since development began in the late 1980s, Venlo Trade Port has proven to be both a successful concept and an extremely favourable location for commercial enterprises. One of the first developers was ECT of Rotterdam, a leading global handler of maritime and continental containers. In 1993, the international forwarding company Frans Maas and the Japanese food giant Nissin Foods established operations. Today, transport and forwarding companies in particular are well represented, offering a variety of logistic services ranging from stock holding, transit-warehousing, invoicing and physical distribution to the complete logistics of Just In Time operations.
Venlo Trade Port
Venlo is one of Europe's primary distribution centres. The 800-hectare Venlo Trade Port is the most important and state-of-the-art business park, specially designed for companies in transportation, industry and environmental technologies. Therefore Trade Port West can be considered as the prime location for logistics. The Trade Port Business concept combines an advanced telecommunications infrastructure with a strategic-location and fully-integrated railway transhipment facilities. High-speed container shuttle-services provide daily connections between Venlo and the world's largest port in Rotterdam.
Venlo Trade Port provides a basis for a cluster of high technology companies with their international headquarters in Venlo and research facilities, supported by an extended network of high-technology suppliers. Another important business sector for Venlo is the Agribusiness. The Southeast Netherlands Auction is the largest mixed horticultural auction in the world.
Strong Strategic Position in the Future
In the coming years, some important transportation links will be further strengthened, most significantly with the anticipated connection of the A73 to the German BAB61 that will be completed in 2007. Rail links with Germany will also be expanded, as will terminals and sidings complexes before 2010.
New Venlo harbour connection for enhanced inter-modality plans are currently being finalised for the development of a Venlo barge terminal on the Maas river that will be opened in 2006. Direct, latest-technology connections will soon offer combination road/rail transport from the Venlo harbour to the Venlo Trade Port, initially for bulk goods as well as containers on the longer term.
