AMSTERDAM: Executives from two dozen California companies convened last night with Netherlands Minister for Economic Affairs, Henk Kamp, Prince Constantijn van Oranje and other members of a Dutch delegation who visited Silicon Valley this week to spur major tech companies and early-stage entrepreneurs to invest in Holland.
The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA), which helps international companies establish and expand operations in the Netherlands, organized an investment dinner at the Silicon Valley Capital Club to discuss the Dutch investment climate. Attendees included executives from Dolby, GoPro, LinkedIn, Netflix, Oracle, DuPont, Applied Medical, Google, Uber and other California companies that have business facilities in the Netherlands.
The dinner was part of an economic mission to California led by Netherlands Minister for Economic Affairs Henk Kamp. Prince Constantijn, who serves as Special Envoy for Startups, was the guest of honor at the dinner. TechCrunch recently called the Netherlands “The World’s High-Tech Startup Capital.”
With the Netherlands and Silicon Valley both at the forefront of innovation, Minister Kamp and NFIA officials met privately during the week with a number of California companies with existing operations in the Netherlands.
With a strong reputation for being pro-business and a strategic gateway to Europe for North American companies, the Netherlands attracted numerous high-profile investments from the U.S. and Canada in 2016. Official results will be released at the end of January, but projects included construction of a new Medtronic facility in Heerlen, which will add 140 jobs to the existing 1,000 employees at the company’s adjacent Center of Excellence; an announcement by Oracle that it will open its new Cloud Sales Center in Amsterdam in June 2017, adding 450 jobs there to those already at its European headquarters in Utrecht; and Canadian start-up Handle Hands announced in October that it will establish its European headquarters in Rotterdam.
Continuing the momentum, Willamette Valley Company (Wilvaco) announced at the dinner that it will establish manufacturing operations in the Netherlands in 2017. Based in Eugene, Oregon, the company develops coatings, fillers, paints and other solutions for a wide variety of applications.
“Silicon Valley companies value the Dutch business proposition and have found our country to be fertile ground for growth,” said Jan-Emile van Rossum, Executive Director for NFIA North America. “The Netherlands offers remarkable technology strengths, world-class infrastructure, a highly educated workforce that speaks English fluently, a creative mindset and supportive corporate tax structure.
The Netherlands has become a beacon of trust, with our stable business environment and NFIA’s commitment to long-term collaboration with our current investors,” he continued. “That’s why so many companies are going Dutch and NFIA North America has supported more than 2,200 companies with their expansions to Europe.”
