3 questions to Gaëtan Servais (CEO of Noshaq)

Why did Noshaq invest in Industrya?

Noshaq invested in Industrya to participate in an industrial ecosystem, the 4.0. That’s how we do things at Noshaq. We target priority sectors such as industrialization and 4.0, and energy, to work with partners and build a real ecosystem of research, academics, incubators, financial partners. Industrya ticks all the boxes.

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What is the strength of Industrya compared to other VCs?

Industrya is a fund that is specialized. Specialized funds always have more expertise in a given field since they bring together a number of skills and expertise in a very particular area. John Cockerill is obviously a company that is a model of industrialization for the whole of Belgium and even the whole world. And so already there is a very strong accumulation of expertise; and then we have all the incubators, which will also contribute their expertise in company coaching. So it really brings together many skills. It's quite unique, obviously apart from the forty-two million euros that will also be invested in companies.

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Industrya targets sectors such as industry, 4.0, energies, new materials. Are these themes important for Noshaq?

Very important because, since our creation, our mission has been industrial reconversion. And for years, for many years, in the 80s and 90s, we believed that reconversion was driven by logistics, R&D. And in fact, since early 2008, with the emergence of the elements you've just mentioned, well, there is a new economic paradigm that gives us the capacity in Wallonia to reindustrialize. And so these themes are really also our most important focus in our ambition to reindustrialize the Liège basin.

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