This Friday is the 25th anniversary of DAF's request for deferred payment. The Eindhoven truck manufacturer was on the brink of bankruptcy, which was only completed 19 years later. At the same time, Philips was pulled inside out by a major reorganization under the name of Centurion. And NedCar almost completely left Helmond. The bad messages succeeded each other rapidly. Southeast Brabant soared and cracked, it groaned and all but collapsed. Tens of thousands of people lost their jobs. Another blow in theneck - also mentally - in 1998 was caused by the relocation of Philips’head office to Amsterdam.
But now. Look around you. Where are we? ASML grows like a Japanese knotweed, NXP has turned out to be a popular bride, High Tech Campus and Automotive Campus are developing the techniques of the future, the region and the city are working together to get the city’s facilities in order with a lot of money. Not only ASML, also VDL, FEI, Philips, DAF, and other attractive companieswere able to model an enviable economic and innovative engineout of the ashes of decades ago.
And we can all feel it: life has become great around here. No need to be shy about that, not even from our point of view. Yes, one may have second thoughts about all the successes, because obviously, not everyone is benefiting equally from this progress. For this one time, however, we are not putting our finger on the sore spot. On the next six pages, the glass is three-quarters full. Because it’s greataround here!
John van den Oetelaar - Editor-in-chief Eindhovens Dagblad
