In Chinese, “logistics” means “Rotterdam"

On contract with DHL, the Chinese giant Huawei has established its European Distribution Center (EDC) for ICT products at the small Dutch city of Eindhoven, just 100 km down the road from the port of Rotterdam. In spite of the Chinese economic slowdown, container flows to Rotterdam continue to show a healthy growth throughout 2015. Due to its strategic location; stable business environment; extensive network of infrastructure; and a well-educated labor force, Rotterdam is Europe’s distribution center par excellence, matched only by that of Singapore. No wonder therefore that half of Europe’s Asian and North American distribution centers are located in the port’s wider industrial cluster. If one drives around on European motorways he couldn’t miss noticing that one in three trucks, from Spain to Poland and from Finland to Greece, are Dutch. Half of Rotterdam’s inhabitants are holders of a foreign passport, and the hundreds of multinationals like Huawei, setting up shop in Rotterdam, have transformed the city into a modern metropolis in less than 20 years. From open fields and cows in the 1990s, to the “Manhattan” of the Netherlands in 2015, this is not a bad score by any count. HH