Last night on December 9th, the Dujat December Dinner took place at Hotel Okura Amsterdam. The event is an annual tradition that started back in 2003 and has proven to be a truly prestigious event for the Dutch and Japanese Business Community in The Netherlands. A perfect ‘End-of-the-Year Party’, and is considered to be a great networking opportunity for our members and their business relations.
During the event, Geert Jan Mantel, Chairman of Dujat gave his goodbye speech, as he will step down as chairman after 6 years. From January 1st 2020, Luc Houben, currently Vice Chairman, will take over the position. We are grateful for Geert Jan Mantel’s contribution for the past couple of years, and look forward to our cooperation with Luc Houben. At the Dujat New Year’s Reception on January 27th, there will be an official opportunity to say goodbye to Geert Jan Mantel.
This year we were honored to welcome H.E. Mr. Hidehisa Horinouchi, Ambassador of Japan to The Netherlands, and Mr. Pieter Elbers, President and Chief Executive Officer at KLM as our guests of honor at the Dujat Dinner. We would like to give special thanks to the ambassador for his impressive speech in both Dutch and Japanese, and to Mr. Elbers for his interesting presentation. The audience was impressed.
We also had a wonderful performance by Chorus SORA, one of the active groups of “Stichting Nichiran Silvernet” (photos coming soon), and last but not least, the evening was concluded with the 7th Deshima Netherlands Award Ceremony, presented by Mr. Jeroen Nijland, commissioner of Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency.
Congratulations to the winners Yakult and MM Metal Recycling, and to the nominees EKK Eagle Simrax and Yokogawa Europe in the category ‘well-established’, and to Mizuno Corporation Netherlands and Whill Europe in the category ‘newcomer’. For more information about the Deshima Awards, we refer to a separate article.
That concludes our summary of the evening. Many thanks to all members and relations who made this event successful. We recommend to keep an eye on this article, a detailed photo gallery of the evening is coming soon. See you all next year!