May 2024

Bax opens new office in Brussels

Bax has expanded its presence in Belgium with the opening of its Brussels office. Working closely with our teams in Barcelona, Utrecht, Cambridge, and Düsseldorf, the Brussels office will serve Bax’s growing base of Belgian clients and partners with dedicated in-country support.

For more than twenty years we’ve helped Belgium’s forward-thinking cities and companies to pilot ideas for sustainable communities. With the opening of our Belgian office, we’re even better positioned to support that impact on the ground.

– Sebastiaan van Herk, CEO of Bax

The opening of our Brussels office aims to make it easier than ever for public authorities and mission-driven companies based in Belgium to pilot their innovations with Bax. The national office adds to our existing support for Belgian partners and clients, including:

consultants native in Flemish and French

consultants with experience working in Belgium

and counting innovation leaders within our EU ecosystem

(Even) closer to the heart of Europe

The opening of our Brussels office means we can offer even better access to European support and funding to our clients for their large-scale societal impact initiatives.

Our European Programmes team has mobilised more than €250m for impact-driven initiatives across Europe in the past decade. Having a presence in Brussels improves our ability to source funding and support for our clients, multiplying their capacity for impact many times over.

– Franziska Dietrich, Head of European Programmes at Bax

Talk to our European Programmes team about funding your initiative here.

Our work in Belgium

For the last two decades, we’ve supported Belgian changemakers to pilot first-of-a-kind initiatives for societal good, including:

Building Local Energy Action Plans with Antwerp and Gent – Bax’s energy team is working with the municipalities of Gent and Antwerp to build and pilot Local Energy Action Plans, first-of-a-kind planning documents that combine urban and energy network planning through city-DSO collaboration. To test their LEAPs on the ground, we are supporting Antwerp with an electric heating and mobility pilot on the Left Bank, which aims to be climate-neutral by 2030. In Gent, we’re supporting a pilot of a virtual power plant for an upcoming ‘all-electric’ neighbourhood in Mariakerke.

Helping Mpact to make shared mobility accessible in Belgium and beyond – Our Mobility team is working with Belgian NGO Mpact on the Shared Mobility for All initiative, a leading European collaboration to make shared mobility options for families, disabled users and others with reduced mobility. Bax is supporting the management of the initiative, which aims to deliver 11 accessible shared pilots in the next three years, including a pilot to improve Trivelo, a taxi service for reduced mobility users run by the City of Ghent agency De Fietsambassade.

Supporting HUmani – CHU Charleroi-Chimay to develop market-ready AI health innovations – Our Health team is supporting Belgian hospital HUmani – CHU Charleroi-Chimay as part of the EU’s €60m TEF-Health initiative. Bax’s healthcare specialists are working with CHU researchers to improve the market readiness of medical innovations developed within the project, ensuring research translates into viable services for SMEs, clinicians, and industry.

Greening Belgium’s cities with blue-green infrastructure – Our Nature team has been supporting Belgian organisations with pilots and funding for blue-green infrastructure projects. Since 2017, we’ve advanced blue-green techniques in Antwerp, Ghent, Brugge and others, improving sustainability and climate resilience while making cities nicer places to live.

Get in touch with the Belgian office

Municipalities, companies, industry players and researchers looking to fund and pilot a societally transformational initiative in Belgium can contact brussels@baxcompany.com to learn more.

Sebastiaan van Herk, PhD

CEO

Nature

Urban

Franziska Dietrich

Head of European Programmes