Engaging and Celebrating Belgium’s Young Maritime Talents

25 August 2022 | The future belongs to the youth! To better engage youths and develop potential ambassadors for our organisation, PSA Belgium has been continuously working with local education institutes, colleges and universities to share industry expertise and offer a taste of real-world work opportunities to these students.

On 23 June, PSA Belgium organised the 50th edition of the “PSA Awards” celebrating young talents from the Karel De Grote University of Applied Sciences and Arts (KdG). As part of the annual awards, a group of five supply chain management graduates presented their thesis topics to a panel of judges and this year, the jury selected the thesis by Enno Smout as the winner for his work on digitalisation at the breakbulk terminals.

As this was a special jubilee edition of the “PSA Awards”, the students were invited on board the “Festina Lente” ship for their presentations and also enjoyed a tour of our terminals in the Port of Antwerp. The day’s activities were topped off with an enjoyable barbeque.

On 1 July, PSA Belgium, together with colleagues from the Antwerp Terminal Services (ATS), also held the “ATS awards” to recognise the best thesis submissions from students who were studying vessel and port techniques or electromechanics at a college near the Port of Antwerp.

This year the awards went to Brent Smets for his thesis on the electronic foam proportioner (EFP) that can help extinguish flammable liquids, and Brian Vandenbussche who did a study on empty container handlers.

“We would like to congratulate the winners of both the PSA and ATS Awards for their great theses. From the past, we know that the recipients have a great future ahead of them in logistics. With these awards, we not only want to encourage and reward high-level work in fields that are relevant to our sector, we also see this as a tremendous opportunity to present our company to these upcoming talents as a potential future employer,” says Ivan De Maere, Head of HR and Communications, PSA Belgium.