15 March 2022
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Brightlands Maastricht Health Campus has everything needed to translate ideas for medical innovations into concrete products or services. Startups and established companies will find support in creating a business plan including legal support, the route to financiers, legal expertise, office space, research facilities, etc.
Since last year, Demcon has filled a missing link in the ecosystem: an engineering company that actually engineers, prototypes and manufactures new instruments and devices. Demcon is one of the fastest growing tech companies in the Netherlands. It now has 900 employees, spread across various branches in the Netherlands and the rest of the world. All of them close to industrial centers. Last year Demcon settled at Brightlands Maastricht Health Campus.
High-quality technology solutions
'We develop high-quality technological solutions for clients on the basis of contract development,' says Edwin Beckers, manager at Demcon Medical Systems in Best in the Eindhoven region and also quartermaster in Maastricht. We do that for the manufacturing industry and increasingly for companies in the biotech and medical world. Maastricht, with its university hospital, university and campus, is emphatically profiling itself as an innovator with new materials, cell culture and innovative treatments. This requires the design and production of new equipment. This is an attractive market for us, and one to which we are very happy to make a contribution. And so we have established ourselves on the campus.
Open arms
Open arms
In March 2021, in the middle of the corona crisis, Maastricht native and chemist Edwin Beckers received the key to the office space at 55 Oxford Avenue and began a round of interviews with the various companies and organizations on campus. Now, exactly one year later, eleven engineers are already working in Maastricht. While no new clients have yet been won. No, that's not how it works in this world. We first show interested parties what we can do for them. We explain that we can convert an idea into a working device. For example, a blood pressure monitor or a respirator, as we have done before. We have the knowledge, we can make a working prototype and eventually also produce devices. We are convinced that this will strengthen and complete this campus. After a year of talking evaluation, we have been confirmed in that idea. We have been received with open arms, we have been around the table with many parties.'
Eleven engineers
But new contracts have not yet been signed and yet, in terms of space, things are already starting to wrinkle. There are all sorts of things in the pipeline, but I can't go public with them yet. In the meantime we have already recruited eleven engineers. They are in the starting blocks and in the meantime are working on various other Demcon projects. We can hardly handle the work. In one year Demcon has grown by a hundred people nationwide, especially in the Energy, Agri&Food, Hi-tech systems and Life Sciences sectors.'
Growth Limburg
The Dutch manufacturing industry is growing, particularly in the large clusters in places like Eindhoven, Delft and Enschede. 'And so in Limburg,' adds Edwin Beckers. Especially with materials, biotech and sustainable energy. The bottleneck, however, is that there is still relatively little engineering capacity available here. Graduated engineers, also in Limburg, are therefore usually forced to stay in Brabant or the west. That is why I once left for Eindhoven, because there was not much to be found in Limburg. We see this changing now. It hasn't taken us long to find good engineers who want to work in Maastricht. We're definitely going to take on a few more people this year.
No competitors
Demcon's primary focus is on the medical sector in and around Maastricht. 'Maastricht University is moving more and more from medical to engineering. Of course there are parties like IDEE and Maastricht Instruments with whom we like to work. We are not competitors of each other, but complementary. We are also there for startups that are not affiliated with UM. We also see opportunities at Brightlands Chemelot Campus in Geleen. So much is happening here in the transition to sustainable energy and circularity, engineers are indispensable for that.'
Ecosystem
Edwin Beckers expects to grow to 40 or 50 people in Maastricht within a few years. Several vacancies are already open. Will they all work on campus? We'll see then. The ecosystem on this campus is ideal for us. The focus on valorization with all those facilitating companies and service providers attracts a lot of activity. We bring the contract engineering, indeed a missing link. Demcon is not the kind of company that plans everything down to the last detail. If we see opportunities, we take steps immediately. Incidentally, it is not the intention to actually start production in Maastricht. We do that in Enschede, where we assemble the designed instruments and equipment. We have built up an extensive network of suppliers for that purpose.