Thiruvananthpuram: Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday visited the Port of Rotterdam and interacted with experts and representatives of Dutch maritime companies.
Mr. Edwin van Espen, programme manager, Port of Rotterdam, received the chief minister and the team of officials. He briefed the delegation about inland waterways, logistics, flood control and water management in the area.
Mr Vijayan interacted with the representatives of leading Dutch companies in the maritime sector and Dutch officials. With an annual throughput of 460 million tonnes, Port of Rotterdam is the largest in Europe and one of the leading ports in the world.
It manages and develops the port and industrial area of Rotterdam. It does not handle cargo by itself, but leases plots to terminals and industries. The quality of the Dutch port infrastructure was rated as the best in the world by the World Economic Forum in 2017.
The chief minister later visited an experimental station of the University of Wageningen at Westmaas in Netherlands. Mr. MA (Marco) Otte, senior advisor, Relation Management & Account Management, received the delegation.
Discussions were held on collaborations in a number of areas of interest to Kerala such as precision farming, crop diversification, cold storage, below sea-level and saline agriculture in Kuttanad and ecotourism.
Wageningen University & Research is a public university in the Netherlands focusing on research in the field of life sciences and natural resources. It is ranked No. 1 in agriculture and forestry.
Westmaas is one of the test locations of the field crops, a business unit of the Wageningen University, where research is conducted on arable farming, multifunctional agriculture and field production of vegetables. The facility has 78 hectares of young sea clay with underground irrigation pipes as well as 16 storage cells with climate control.
