The local business fabric
Charleroi is probably the Belgian city that has changed its skin most thoroughly in twenty years. Brussels South Charleroi Airport has grown a full ecosystem around Gosselies — airlines, ground handling, hotels, parking, subcontracting — that simply did not exist in the 1990s. On the same ground, the Gosselies Biopark has made Charleroi Wallonia's leading biotech cluster, with its laboratories, university spin-offs and advanced-therapy production units. A little further on, A6K/E6K has taken over former industrial halls and turned them into a centre for engineering, technical training and Industry 4.0, while the Charleroi Digital City initiative pushed the city towards a deliberate digital strategy. Yet the foundation remains industrial — glass, metal, energy, mechanical subcontracting — and you hear it on the phone: Charleroi companies rarely call us for a pretty brochure site, they want a technical catalogue searchable by part number, a configurator, a reseller portal, a tool that talks to the shop floor.