Tradewinds: Rotterdam well placed to be Europe’s maritime centre

Recently the European Research and Innovation network MENON, published some rankings of maritime cities. According to one of these rankings, Rotterdam will become the leading maritime city of Europe within five years. Off course such a ranking will always be subject to debate, but for the City of Rotterdam and RMSC this was a good occasion to breed some discussion in the international leading maritime magazine ‘’Tradewinds’’.

If Rotterdam will truly become the maritime centre of Europe in the coming years will depend on many factors. One of these factors is the concentration of maritime business services in the region, facilitating the maritime industries and the maritime related developments in the region.

As a community of maritime business services, RMSC will play an important role to realize Rotterdam’s full potential as a maritime centre.  Firstly RMSC will contribute to a strong maritime business climate, by facilitating and activating the business community. Secondly RMSC is putting effort into three important common themes (see below) together with her members and partners. Successful cooperation on these themes between public and private institutions and knowledge institutions will determine for a large part the competitiveness of the Rotterdam region in comparison with other maritime regions, like London and Hamburg. In this respect we should realize that the Rotterdam ‘’no nonsense’’ mentality is an important asset. It helps us to proceed, while others got stuck in discussions and it helps us to built alliances that actually show results. In the end this might be the decisive factor that other maritime business centers lack.