In November 1987, when Unisys Corp announced the closure of its Belgian factory in Liege, which produced the B900, B1900 and the X500 for Europe, and had just started making Convergent machines, it seemed that Belgium’s contribution to the computer industry would go no further than the production of desk-tops, but the Belgians did not give up as easily as that. Just as 400 of the 500 employees based at Liege were to lose their jobs, a group of Belgian investors, headed by the industrialist Leon DeFerm, took over the plant for a princely three Belgian francs – three cents, or 1.7p – intending to build an independent Belgian business. Trident Technology Holding was this business, and the UKP25m plant was to be used for printed circuit board manufacture and as a base for engineering and maintenance in Europe. Unisys also handed over the assembly line for the XE-550 and its international repair plant. But the proposed deals with Toshiba and Canal Plus Belgique, an independent television network, came to nothing: all that was forthcoming was a problematic deal to make microcomputers for Zeus Computers, and an UKP8m deal with the Italian firm Agusta, which in the event came to late. In July of this year, DeFerm was also forced to throw in the towel, again because of overcapacity and insufficient orders: voluntary liquidation followed, and of the 297 workers laid off, half staged an occupation of Unisys’ distribution centre at Seneffe. But Belgian resilience knows no bounds: Prodata, the Belgian division of the Electrorail group is said to be interested in having a go and is talking to none other than…
Leon Deferm.
