Biolog Europe

In 2006, American pharmaceutical group Johnson & Johnson set up the European Distribution Centre for its Medical Device and Diagnostics branch in Courcelles. On a surface area of 47,000 m², this centre distributes 54,000 products to 21 European countries. It also supplies depots across the whole world with products manufactured in Europe. The site has a preparation platform which directs the parcels according to their weight and volume ton one of eight sorting lines, identified according to destination country and transporter.

"Wallonia", explains Jean-Michel Colnot, Operations Director, “is ideally located for shipping by road to our two major markets, France and Germany, and its close to freight airports at Liège and Brussels. The region has the support of the public authorities and all of the workforce we need is available. Our team work 7days a week, which enables us to handle an average of 4,000 orders a day."

The American group has inaugurated its new site accommodating it’s administrative and research services. The building, which required investment of 40 million euros, offers Baxter a total area of 13,500 square metres, 3,000 m² of which is given over to laboratories and a warehouse. It accommodates 430 people, 250 of which are researchers. Developed for 500 people, the building thus offers some room for growth. This new site, the second of the group’s European research centres after Orth, close to Vienna (Austria), is a token of the lasting nature of the group’s presence in Belgium.

The choice of Lessines was made in 1970 with the construction of a first production site, and in 1996 with the establishment of a European Distribution Centre. But it is the company’s technical expertise, its productivity levels and a strategic European location which make the difference today. The granting of “Objective 1” European structural finds for Hainaut province was a determining factor in the group’s decision to invest in Lessines rather than in Alsace (France)