The BLCCA Academy: less than a week away!

We’re almost there: on 5 September, the BLCCA Academy will be back for a new live event, full of exchanges, inspiring visits and surprising discoveries!

We present you the plan for this 2022 edition, and we come back to what makes the essence of the BLCCA Academy: sharing good practices, learning and spending quality time with your colleagues.

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The visits

The BLCCA Academy is also an opportunity to notice the extent of our Belgian heritage, and to discover regions that we are not used to visiting.

This year, Limburg is the place to be! Strategically located in Europe, close to Brussels, the Netherlands, and Germany, the region is full of innovative businesses that contribute to the vitality of the Belgian entrepreneurial fabric. Moreover, the greenest province of Flanders will seduce you with its nature and local specialities. Limburg will amaze more than one!

“Une brique dans le ventre”… literally!

With 700 employees, Vandersanden is a pioneer in the production of bricks in Europe. Their range includes facing bricks, clay pavers, facade systems and many others.

In 2021, the family business was awarded the Deloitte “Best Managed Company” gold label for the fourth year in a row, showing the world that it sets an example in innovation, sustainability, and employee well-being.

A focus on green businesses

LRM is a permanent investment fund created by the Flemish government in the late 1980s in response to the closure of the Limburg coal mines. The company makes a point of financing mainly green companies. LRM acts as a huge incubator, a lab for creative initiatives, whose objective is to make Limburg a prosperous and liveable region.

In the heart of the Hoge Kempen

Thor Park is a research and development site specialising in new technologies. The 64-hectare complex is located on the former Waterschei mining site and is perfectly integrated into the Hoge Kempen National Park. Thor Park is a huge industrial, technological and scientific hub, home to renowned research institutes, start-ups, companies on the rise and global players in the energy sector, manufacturing industry and Smart City applications field.

A fruitful collaboration

The Energyville research institute is the result of a collaboration between KU Leuven, VITO, imec and UHasselt to further develop sustainable energy. These stakeholders want to make the site one of the leading European research centres. On the campus, more than 400 researchers work together to accelerate the transition to a zero-carbon, sustainable and connected future, using cutting-edge high-tech equipment. Located in the centre of Thor Park, Energyville was recently awarded a BREEAM ‘outstanding’ label, the highest reachable certificate, proving that the building meets the most demanding sustainability and energy efficiency criteria.

The campus of all records

The Corda Campus figures are impressive: with 75 digital technology businesses out of 250, the site alone accounts for 10% of the companies of this type in Belgium. The 70,000 m² complex houses offices, labs and studios, which are visited every day by almost 5,000 employees of innovative SMEs and startups. The park also stands out for its visibility on the European scene: every year, it attracts entrepreneurs active in the fields of artificial intelligence, SaaS and biotechnology.