0.A very diverse portfolio of chemistry-based industrial activities developed through the past two centuries in Belgium. The Belgian chemical sector today has one of the highest degrees of specialisation in the world.
The chemical and life sciences is a very heterogeneous sector. It includes a wide range of activities, from basic organic and inorganic products to pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, products for agriculture, paints, glues, detergents, cosmetics, rubber and plastics processing and many other specialty products such as chemicals for the photographic industry.
Chemicals and life sciences serve many needs, from the most elementary to the most sophisticated in safety, hygiene, comfort, health and numerous other fields. The chemical and life sciences industry is a vital source for the sustainable development of our economy.
Belgium, a home base for the chemical industry
Belgium has been a home base for the chemical industry thanks to major innovations and the pioneering role of several 19th-century Belgians such as Ernest Solvay, Lieven Gevaert, Léo Hendrik Baekeland and Albert Meurice. In more recent decades, people such as Paul Janssen and Christian de Duve played a major role in the development of the pharmaceutical industry.
The spectacular development of the port area of Antwerp since the 1960s has been of vital importance for the growth of the base chemical industry in Belgium. Thanks to considerable investments by Belgian and foreign companies in the petrochemical industry and other major chemical activities, Antwerp has developed into a leading global petrochemical center.
The pharmaceutical industry, meanwhile, expanded rapidly during the past 20 years in Flanders as well as in Wallonia.
The chemical industry and life sciences in a nutshell
• The industry’s turnover exceeded 54 billion EUR in 2007, accounting for one-fifth of total turnover in Belgium’s manufacturing sector as a whole.
• Direct employment in the chemical and life sciences industry totals about 94,000 jobs, or 16% of all employment in the entire manufacturing sector. In addition, the chemical and life sciences industry generates about 150,000 indirect jobs in other sectors of the Belgian economy.
• The chemical and life sciences industry is highly export-oriented. Exports amounted to 99.2 billion EUR in 2007 (including transit). Exports of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics and rubber generated a positive trade balance of more than 18 billion EUR in 2007, contributing to the growth of the Belgian economy.
• Since 2005, the trade balance of the chemical and life sciences industry exceeds the total trade balance of Belgium as a whole.
• Investment amounted to 1.96 billion EUR in 2007, representing more than one quarter of total investment in the manufacturing sector. The basic chemical industry accounted for nearly half of all investment, two-thirds of which was in the Antwerp region.
• Research and development expenditure in the chemical and life sciences industry totalled an estimated 2.32 billion EUR in 2007. This represented nearly half of all private-sector R&D spending in Belgium. Life sciences, which includes pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, accounted for about three quarters of the sector’s R&D.
•The Belgian chemical industry accounts for more than 6% of the total European turnover in this sector, even though Belgium’s share of the total EU population is only 2.1%.