Bert-Jan Ruissen MEP expressed his pride in the Dutch fisheries sector after a difficult period, speaking at the twelfth Holland Fisheries event to be held in Urk, during which exhibitors from Holland and elsewhere showed technical offerings and innovations over more than two thousand visitors.
‘The fleet is picking up. You can see that here at the fair, which sends a clear message to the sector: we are not sitting on our hands! This should also be encouraging for young people with a profession at sea,’ Bert-Jan Ruissen said, opening his speech and also kicking off the Fisheries Innovation Network (VIN) conference.
Led by Jan Peter Oelen, Arie Mol of VIN and Geert Hoekstra of Wageningen University and Research, four sub-sessions were examined a range of subjects – fishing without rules, a new fishing vessel design, new subsidy schemes, and the fisherman of the future.
Bert-Jan Ruissen’s words reflected the atmosphere of two days of fair. There was clear optimism among visitors, including many skipper-owners and crew from the Netherlands and Belgium, about the future and a need for innovations for a future-proof vessel.
The only fishing fair in the Netherlands provided an exhibition floor for more than 75 national and international exhibitors from India, Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania and Belgium, among others. The fair organisers like to see this as providing a platform to network broadly and across borders.
De Wit Assurantiën, a family business specialising in risk management, based in Stellendam, was the main sponsor of Holland Fisheries Event 2024. The company was in the A pavilion together with entrepreneurs from the Maritime Cluster from Stellendam.
‘You become a main sponsor because you want to mean something to the sector,’ said CEO Hans Juch.
‘In our case, that was bringing together entrepreneurs, people working for and in the fishing industry and boys and girls who are in maritime training. We can say that this has been successful and hopefully has been fertile ground for promising initiatives.’
