Sustainable Logistics Alex Van Breedam, Director - Flanders Institute for Logistics

Logistics has secured a place as a strategic sector for Benelux. The added value of logistics is over 8% of the gross domestic product, and it employs over 8% of the working population. These figures alone show that logistics is more than just transport and warehouses. Furthermore, logistics today can only flourish

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sustainably if the connection with industrial activities is strong enough. This means that the boundary between logistics and production is becoming less defined. This can be seen in the changing design of larger warehouses. For example the pure storage space is increasingly making way for added value activities with an increasingly industrial

character, such as assembly, adding options or kitting. These types of activities are labour intensive, providing work for more than 30,000 people in more than 790 European distribution centres (EDCs) supplying at least five European countries. Aside from the obvious benefits of logistics for the economy, the social and ecological