The New Hub

What is Europe's fastest-growing industrial hub? Frankfurt? Milan? London? No, by the reports of bankers and industrialists, it is Antwerp, the inland Belgian port 55 miles up the River Scheldt from the North Sea.

At Europe's third-busiest port (after Rotterdam and London), factories and tank farms are sprouting amid ancient cathedrals and guild halls. Foreign companies have invested $750 million in new plants since 1964, plan some $500 million more over the next three years in a city whose population (654,500) is smaller than New Orleans. This month General Motors laid the cornerstone for a $100 million factory--G.M.'s second in Antwerp--that will be the company's main European assembly point, employ more than 6,000 Belgians and turn out 300,000 Opels a year. Last week chemical-making B.A.S.F. broke ground for a plant that will ultimately be as large as the company's home base in Germany.

Antwerp's greatest expansion is in chemicals. Belgium's own Solvay is putting up a polyethylene plant. The U.S.'s Phillips Petroleum is joining with Belgian partners in a $190 million naphtha plant and with France's Rhone-Poulenc in another venture. Union Carbide has $40 million in construction under way; next month a $20 million Monsanto plant will go into operation. With all this, four major U.S. banks have branched into Antwerp in the past year.

Antwerp has been blessed by history, geography and its neighbor's good roads. The single superhighway leading from the city fortunately connects with the German autobahn, and excellent canal and rail links tie Antwerp to the rest of Europe. Compared with its bigger competitors for investment, Belgium is more centrally located than Italy or Britain, more politically friendly than France, and farther from the Iron Curtain than West Germany. In the hunt for new business, Antwerp since 1956 has spent $100 million to clear industrial sites and double its harbor capacity, plans to have the port ready for 100,000-ton supertankers by 1970.*Belgium also gives foreign businessmen low-cost financing, tax holidays up to five years, and a minimum of government interference. As a result, the Washington-based Atlantic Council of blue-ribbon U.S. business and political leaders rates the country's investment climate as "perhaps the best in the Common Market."

-- Not to be outdone, the rival Dutch have announced a fiveyear, $218 million plan to create deepwater berths for 165,000-tonners at Rotterdam.

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