vrijdag 10 april 2015

Day 3 : Janssen Pharmaceuticals & Lille



Janssen Pharmaceuticals & Lille

After a nice breakfast we continued our study tour from Zoersel to Janssen Pharmaceuticals in Beerze. Janssen Pharmaceuticals, joined the Johnson & Johnson family of companies in 1961 and is one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in the health care field. The company site in Beerze is the largest in Europe. 

As befits a large company we had to get our visitors pass to continue our company visit. We were welcomed by Greet Teuns and started our day by presenting the case about toxicogenomics. Friso Aalbers, Juul van Heek, Maarten Hekman and Yara Westgeest did a great job at presenting and discussing the case with several experts on this area. We even went over our time and had to rush to the big canteen to enjoy an amazing lunch. After lunch we had a nice company tour where we got to see a lot of aspects of a large pharmaceutical company. We got to see the high-tech labs and had to dress up to see the housing facilities of the animals used for animal testing studies. 

We were very privileged to see this much of the company and learned a lot. We ended our visit with a group photo and resumed our trip to Lille.

woensdag 20 augustus 2014

Dag 2 : Nuscience & Zoersel


Nuscience & Zoersel


The second day of our trip started at 8 o'clock with a nice breakfast at the hostel. We said goodbye to the hostelmanager and already looked forward to our return to Hostel 47 on Friday. We left Gent and traveled to Nutrition Sciences, the R&D division of the Nuscience Group, in Drongen.


At Nuscience we were welcomed by Geert Bruggemans and Katrien de Schepper. They both gave a presentation about the company and the differences between a career in academics or at a company. Here we learned that Nuschience is a leading partner for companies in the animal feed industry all over the world. Nuscience has 650 employees and supplies products, like premixes, to over 60 countries and has a revenue of 340 mil. per year. 


Then it was up to Eva and Anouk to present their case about drying methods of animal feed components. They came up with a novel combination of techniques and even had some results from a pilot test to show Nuscience. This method is really promising and further research will for sure be done. Nuscience was really interested and enthousiastic about their presentation and  findings.


Before we went on a tour around the company we had delicious mini-sandwich lunch. We were taken on a tour around the factory and the laboratory. In the factory every bag of product is checked to keep the quality as high as possible. In the laboratory they have all the equiptment for quality control/assesment and they work in a very efficient way and process over 80.000 samples a year with 3 researchers. We could even taste the special additives that go in piglet feed. This actually tasted unexpectedly sweet.


We all got some goodies from Nuscience, including a cap... This resulted in some really nice group pictures as you can see.


We continued our trip to Zoersel which is a small village (in the middle of nowhere) near Westmalle. Gagelhof was a really cozy youth hostel in the woods run by a group of volunteers. Our hosts were an older married couple. Here we played a game of volleybal (we invented some new rules to help compensate for our lack of motorskills). We then watched the Belgiums win from Australia in the world cup and enjoyed a nice home cooked meal made by Annie. She really pampered us with cooking pears from their own orchard, homemade appelsauce and a cornetto for dessert. We spend our evening playing 'halli galli' and 'cards agains humanity' around the fireplace with some local beers. We also got to taste beer made with gagel instead of hops.  

dinsdag 17 juni 2014

Day 1: FrieslandCampina & Gent

Monday morning 5.45 am, the alarm clock goes off… The last preparations for the study tour are being taken care of and the study tour is about to begin..

At 7.30 the last people arrived at station Groningen Noord, where our 'Er gaat niets boven Groningen' coach was leaving from.
Our ' prominent' coach seen through the windows of FrieslandCampina
After a 2,5 hour drive we arrived at the new research centre of FrieslandCampina in Wageningen. We were warmly welcomed by Ellen van Leusen, Dianne Delsing and Irene Kamp. They gave a nice presentation about FrieslandCampina does as a company. 
Fun fact: Did you know that FrieslandCampina is owned by over 19.000 farmers and it is one of the 5 largest dairy companies in the world?
After this introduction it was up to the FrieslandCampina group, Amber, Kirsten and Roosmarijn, to present their case. They gave a very interesting presentation and the company was really enthusiastic about their suggestions. After a vivid discussion with many company experts we were provided with an luxurious lunch. We got to taste the 'real deal', FrieslandCampina milk. 


We continued our company visit by an interactive experience in the lobby to get to know FrieslandCampina. The many movies where employees told us about FrieslandCampina in relation to their personal lives really showed us that openness of the company is a high priority. 
We were also taken on a tour around the offices and got to see the labs where the actual tasting panel sits. Fun fact: this tasting panel has to go through an extensive training of three months before they can actually taste the products. Dairy product tasting is a part-time job, 5 shifts of 3-hour-yoghurt-tasting a week. Yummm working as a professional dessert-taster!

To conclude the company tour we had a final question round with someone from HR to discuss career path options. It was very interesting to see how many 'roads' you can take to reach a certain position at a company. 
After the company visit we continued our journey to Gent. By bus we maneuvered our way through the narrow streets of Gent. We had high expectations of our first hostel of the study tour and our expectations were exceeded. The beds were as Chiel would say; 'Modern-Antique style'. The hostel was situated near the old city centre. We went out for diner at 'Resto Rood' and afterwards explored the nightlife of Gent. Under the influence of typical Belgium beers we spend our first evening together with laughter and games.