The local business fabric
Walloon Brabant is Wallonia's wealthiest province, and that wealth has a name: pharmaceuticals. GSK, whose vaccines operations sit in Wavre and Rixensart, and UCB in Braine-l'Alleud alone anchor an entire ecosystem of suppliers — equipment makers, analytical labs, validation firms, quality and regulatory affairs providers — many of them SMEs. Next to that, Louvain-la-Neuve is a town born from a university: UCLouvain has produced a steady stream of spin-offs in biotech, medical imaging, software and materials, with business parks such as Axis Parc in Mont-Saint-Guibert. The rest of the province — Nivelles, Tubize, Jodoigne, Genappe — functions as an affluent residential belt: business services, professional practices, construction, upmarket retail. The consequence for us: many clients here hold quality and traceability expectations unusual for an SME, because their own customers are pharmaceutical groups.