The German Aerospace Center will soon be building the world’s largest turbine testing facility here. 48 million euros, 6000 square meters, 150 employees will work there one day. The project developers at Walter AG, on the other hand, are starting with their innovation arc, a striking, green roof building in the shape of a semicircle: 14,000 square meters of office space, 35 million euros in construction costs. The Augsburg Innovation Park is growing and the city is hoping to lead the economic area into the modern age – away from the old industrial location, in which one large company after another breaks up, towards innovative production and research. “We want to achieve a Silicon Valley effect here,” says Managing Director Wolfgang Hehl.
Premium Aerotec is currently stumbling again, companies such as Osram and Fujitsu have closed their large locations in Augsburg in recent years. In a European comparison, the city has an unusually high density of jobs in production. The innovation park is intended to take countermeasures, more and more research institutions and start-ups are settling on the outskirts, in close proximity to the university and trade fair. “If you want to play, you need such a focal point between the interfaces between different industries,” says Augsburg economics officer Wolfgang Huebschle. In the innovation park, Augsburg focuses on future topics such as digitization, artificial intelligence, automation and carbon fiber.
According to managing director Hehl, there are around 2000 such innovation parks in the world. A major competitor in Bavaria is Martinsried in Munich. The idea in Augsburg is to train, research and develop in close proximity to the university and finally to go into prototype construction and series development. This has already worked well for the Rocket Factory, which started out as a small start-up with two men and is now developing resource-efficient mini-transport missiles for a multi-billion market with 80 employees from 15 countries.
The innovation park provides competencies and space, as economic advisor Hübschle puts it. Anyone who develops a prototype, for example for the production of aircraft parts made of carbon fiber, can not only test such a device in the laboratory – he has the opportunity to use a machine hall here. If a company only needs technology engineers for a short period of time, it can hire university students to write a master’s thesis. “We have had a network with universities and companies for ten years. We now know very well who does what and bring knowledge and users together,” says Andreas Thiel from Regio Augsburg Wirtschaft GmbH.
“Purchasing power in the region comes when jobs are created,” says economic advisor Huebschle, and the innovation park is now also attracting companies from Munich. Sascha R. Dragone, for example, pulled up the Weitblick 1.7 building with his AUDAX GmbH directly on Bundesstrasse 17. Photovoltaics on the roof, e-charging stations for cars and bicycles in the garage, window panes that automatically darken when the sun shines. The automotive supplier Webasto, among others, has offices here. “We have tenants in the house who have deliberately left the Munich region to meet their employees who previously commuted from Augsburg to Munich,” says Dragone. And who consciously sought such modern office space in order to be able to offer their employees something. One of the goals of the city and the innovation park is to benefit from the Munich conurbation and to grow in comparison with the lower cost of living. “You don’t always have to call it Greater Munich, but the proximity to Munich is a locational advantage with which we can grow,” says Hübschle. According to managing director Hehl, more and more supraregional companies are interested in the location.
There is still a lot of space on the 70 hectare innovation park, where 1200 jobs have already been created. The innovation arch of Walter AG is to form the entrance gate to Augsburg’s Silicon Valley in the future. “Augsburg is an extremely exciting location with a very good potential for space and an excellent infrastructure,” says board member Jürgen Kolper. Walter AG has secured numerous areas in the innovation park and also the old Fujitsu location right next door. “Technology Campus Augsburg” is what the project developer calls the 18 hectare area with numerous, high-quality production halls. The offer complements well with the innovation park and it shows quite well what Augsburg wants to achieve. “As hard as the departure from Fujitsu was, the expectation is now high that maybe more will be created there,” says Economics Officer Huebschle.