The local business fabric
Tournai looks towards Lille as much as towards Brussels, and that is the decisive economic fact. The Lille metropolitan area is about thirty kilometres away and home to more than a million people: a substantial share of Tournai's SMEs invoice in France, employ or work alongside cross-border commuters, and sell on both sides of the border without giving it a second thought. The city also rests on an old and solid industrial base: Tournai stone and limestone sustained the quarries, the lime kilns and the cement works, while the Tournai Ouest business parks around Marquain and Blandain now concentrate logistics, construction materials and food processing. That border position creates very concrete needs you meet neither in Namur nor in Liège: a site that has to be found on Google.fr as well as Google.be, a price displayed correctly depending on whether the buyer is a French consumer or a Belgian company, invoicing that handles the intra-Community VAT reverse charge. These are plumbing details, but they decide whether or not your market stops at the river Scheldt.