APEC, The training and education centre of Flemish ports, has revealed that it will will organise local training programmes in several Brazilian ports as part of a collaboration agreement.
With this initiative, APEC will meet the demands of the Brazilian maritime sector for special port training programmes, something APEC has organised for its international clientele in Antwerp for many years.
The agreement signed at a ceremony on 11 September 2013 in the Belgian embassy in Brasilia, with Antwerp port alderman Marc Van Peel and Paul Verkoyen, CEO of APEC, also signed a cooperation agreement with the Brazilian minister of ports, Jos Lenidas Cristino, in the presence of Ambassador Jozef Smets.
In a speech, port alderman Van Peel underlined the importance of continuing education: “The port sector is a complex whole with influences from both the international dimension (trade flows) and on a local level (socio-economic role in the region). Catering to these changes to a maximum degree is therefore the challenge these ports constantly and consistently have to face”, said Van Peel.
Referring to the 70 countries that rely on APEC annually, CEO Verkoyen also emphasised the important role played by the port of Antwerp and the other Flemish ports in the international arena by making their knowledge and expertise available to the global port community.
