François Van Leeuw appointed new chairman of the Belgian Offshore Platform

19/06/2020

The Board of Directors of the Belgian Offshore Platform (BOP) has appointed François Van Leeuw as chairman of the BOP.
He succeeds Jaak Rutten who has been chairman for the past four years. Jaak has retired a few months ago.

François Van Leeuw is co-CEO of Parkwind, a holding company of Colruyt Group that currently operates four wind farms in the Belgian North Sea with a total production capacity of 771 MW. After previous experiences at Colruyt, Bank Degroof and the VUB, François Van Leeuw joined forces with an enthusiastic team to develop Parkwind from the very beginning in 2009.
As former CFO and current co-CEO of Parkwind, he was very closely involved in the construction, financing and completion of the Belgian offshore wind farms Belwind, Northwind, Nobelwind and Northwester II.

“The federal government has ensured the development of 2262 MW of wind energy in the Belgian North Sea by end 2020 and a doubling of this capacity after 2020. It is now more necessary than ever to speed up the development of renewable energy sources and offshore wind energy in particular as much as possible. As new chairman of the BOP, I will continue the work of my predecessor to bring the sector as far as possible and to establish offshore wind energy as the building block of the Belgian energy transition”, says François Van Leeuw.