Royal visit to Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo
A great honour for Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo: King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Queen Máxima paid a visit on Thursday 27 May to learn more about the latest developments in healthy food and innovative agrifood. They showed particular interest in the Positive Health programme.
At ten o'clock, director Saskia Goetgeluk welcomed the royal couple to Brightlands Campus Greenport Venlo, where they were given an insight into the power of innovation as the basis for the ‘Healthiest Region’. Because that is the ambition of North Limburg, which has launched the Positive Health programme to this end.
Positive results
The initiative is primarily based on healthy food as a means of preventing disease. Meanwhile, the successful programme has caught on in other regions in the Netherlands as well as abroad. About half of the chronic diseases can be prevented by healthy living. Positive Health works to promote people’s resilience and encourages them to take charge of their own health.
General practitioners using the programme experience the positive results, including 25% fewer referrals to hospital, less use of medication, greater satisfaction among patients and higher job satisfaction among healthcare professionals.
Sustainable and healthy
Various companies and researchers were represented at the innovation market at the campus’ Villa Flora building. These included BASF Vegetable Seeds, Janssen Ei, Scelta Inside and Brightlabs. They updated the royal couple on various products ranging from sustainable eggs, high-quality seeds and vegetable varieties, and unique nutrients in mushrooms. All of these innovations contribute to more sustainable and healthier food.
In addition, the campus ecosystem was explained with the focus on an approach to motivate youth to live healthier lives, and the royal couple were shown a number of HighTech demonstrations: from an asparagus robot to a fully automatic measuring device to measure the thickness of tree trunks.
Impressed
All in all, the visit proved to be very instructive for the royal couple, who said upon leaving that they were very impressed with the power, creativity, knowledge and entrepreneurship at the Brightlands campus.
Read more at brightlands.com
A photo impression
Photos: Brightlands | Province of Limburg
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