The NATO Summit held in The Hague on 24 and 25 June 2025 required an exceptional security operation. Heads of state and government from across the Alliance gathered in the city, making extensive preparation by Dutch police and security services essential.
In Biddinghuizen, a temporary training village made from shipping containers gave police units a realistic setting to practise large-scale scenarios. Hundreds of officers trained there daily, including Mobile Unit (ME) teams preparing for demonstrations and public disorder.
The Biddinghuizen project demonstrates a very different application for standard shipping containers. Rather than functioning as individual units, multiple containers together became temporary training infrastructure.
The flexibility to create a complete environment from modular steel structures makes containers suitable for training applications where realistic surroundings, durability and adaptability are important.
For the preparations surrounding the NATO Summit, that resulted in an entire temporary village where police personnel could prepare for situations they hoped would never occur during the event itself. The summit subsequently took place in The Hague on 24 and 25 June 2025 as part of what Dutch police described as the largest logistical and security operation ever undertaken in the Netherlands.