Bremen as a Business Location

Up to the present day, the Hanseatic City is rightly associated with shipbuilding and foodstuffs. Bremen still boasts a small but high class shipyard industry, which produces in particularly technically sophisticated bespoke vessels, especially for the yachting and military sectors. On a much larger and simultaneously more important scale, Bremen is also a centre of the food and semi-luxuries industry. Whether coffee, beer, chocolate, sausages and meat products, fish, ingredients for the specialist bakery trade or cereals: products from Bremen are a familiar name all over the globe.

As a strong industrial and commercial location with a high export share, Bremen has for some time now been in the process of expanding its role as one of the leading technology locations in Germany. This willingness to change has a deep-rooted tradition: Bremen's cosmopolitan attitude and openness to innovation have always provided a sound basis for the city's economic prosperity. The city on the Weser has always benefited from its thriving seaport trade and its internationally focused, innovative import and export trade – and in that respect, nothing has changed.

The core concept for Bremen's growing importance as a technology location focuses on networking science and the economy. Just one example of the success of that approach is the enormous upswing enjoyed by the technology park which is located in the immediate vicinity of Bremen University. With a workforce of more than 6500 in more than 320 private-sector companies, the technology park is now one of the three largest of its kind in Germany.

The exceptionally positive development of this synergy-driven model for attracting companies to locate here gives us every reason to hope that the Science Park which is to be built next to the recently founded private Jacobs University Bremen (JUB) will make equally impressive progress. Both these examples clearly confirm the correctness of Bremen's decision that a strict savings policy alone is not an adequate response to the critical situation as regards the public purse, but that systematic expansion of its innovative strength is equally important.

Bremen's business community already has excellent fields of competence. For many decades, the aerospace industry has enjoyed close links with the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, which is the second-largest German production and development location within the European Airbus family. Innovative enterprises such as Astrium and OHB Orbitale Hochtechnologie Bremen System GmbH as well as high-profile scientific institutes such as the Centre of Applied Aerospace Technology and Microgravitation (ZARM) prove that Bremen's reputation as the ”City of Aerospace" will be upheld on this high technological level. A particular highlight in that connection is the construction of "Columbus", the European module for the ISS International Space Station.

As the fifth-largest German industrial location, Bremen also offers good location conditions for many other companies. Daimler AG, for instance, has expanded its plant in Bremen to become the second-largest German production site in the entire group. At present, almost 17,000 people are employed on the former Borgward premises, and a thriving SME supply sector for the automobile industry has meanwhile become established in and around Bremen.

In keeping with its role as a traditional commercial and port location, logistics is one of the cornerstones of Bremen's economy. The city is the centre of an international terminal network for sea freight transhipment. The cargo consolidation and distribution park, which went into operation in 1984 as the first cargo centre of that kind in Germany, is a clear example of Bremen's innovation potential. Closely linked to that development is the first-class worldwide reputation of companies from Bremen in the development of dedicated logistics software.

”International technological standards made in Bremen" are provided by Bremen's production technology, marine technology and electrical engineering sectors. Many of the products are the result of close cooperation between the business sector and scientific institutes. This highly efficient model for cooperation also ensures that Bremen enjoys an excellent position in the comparatively new field of communication and information technology. Bremen now has a workforce of more than 6000 in that sector alone.

One of the city's particular strong points is mobile multimedia communications, with some 50 companies representing this central business area. It is not without good reason that Bremen was chosen as one of the UMTS pilot regions for Germany. Other promising competence areas with excellent expansion potential are microsystems technology, the health sector, food technology and bioengineering.

Bremen is doing everything in its power to develop these competencies and is well equipped to do so. The city's scientific infrastructure includes 50 technical research institutes, such as the Fraunhofer and Max Planck Institutes, as well as centres of production technology, microsystems technology, material sciences, aerospace engineering, environmental research, information and telecommunications technologies and informatics.

Bremen is home to one of the leading research universities in northern Germany, with more than 60 courses of study in all scientific disciplines, six special research areas run by the German Research Association (DFG), an internationally oriented, applications-driven University of Applied Sciences ("Fachhochschule") and the founded private International University Bremen (IUB). Together with innovative new businesses and well-established companies, this makes up a fertile soil for Bremen to grow and consolidate its position as ”high-tech city”.

Innovation and tradition are also the solid foundation which supports Bremen's international contacts. As far back as the Middle Ages, merchants from Bremen were already represented in all the world's major ports from Bergen to Bruges, from London to Riga. By the 18 th century, Bremen was one of the first regions in Germany to trade with North America. From 1822 onwards, packet ships regularly travelled between New York and Bremen and the USA increasingly became one of Bremen's main overseas trade partners, with tobacco and cotton making up the main imported goods. By 1869, 26 per cent of the entire imported goods came from the USA, and by 1909 the share had risen to more than 30 per cent. Still today, Bremen is determined to expand its leading role as an international trade location, especially in relation to North America.

Before most other regions in Germany, Bremen had already established trade relations with Central and Eastern Europe – the city of Riga was founded by Bremen merchants. For some years now, companies from Bremen have played a pioneering role in commercial activities in Poland, the Baltic and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe. In connection with the European Union's (EU) enlargement to the East, Bremen has good chances of becoming one of the leading regions in an increasingly integrated "Europe of Regions".

Based on the concept "Airport 2000", for example, the airport in the south of Bremen was developed into a central hub for north-west Germany. The "Airport City" which subsequently developed in the immediate vicinity is now a flourishing trade park. Moreover, there have also been trailblazing developments in sunrise technology sectors and great commitment to making Bremen a leading service sector location.

Bremen also takes a decisive approach to the development of its ports and the transport infrastructure required for hinterland traffic. Year in, year out, Bremen's ports continue to set new records in terms of the volume of cargo throughput.

These developments show the extent to which progress depends on sound traditions. Especially now at the beginning of the 21st century, the traditional values of Bremen's business community are more important than ever before. Increasing market globalisation, swift technological progress and a world which is growing closer and closer thanks to telecommunications and new media call for carefully considered, feasible future concepts and creative ideas as well as visions which pursue the most important objective that Bremen could possible have: ensuring the future viability of Bremen – not only as a business location, but also as an attractive residential and working environment for many thousands of people.