Changing the world through logistics

Whether an AI for Werder Bremen or robots equipped with lasers: These and more stories in our AI overview!

What makes Vietnam – a socialist state – so interesting to western companies? In this edition of our country newsletter for Vietnam we seek to answer this question, and we also report on the country’s most exciting start-ups.

The new Silk Road is China's gigantic infrastructure project. Small and medium sized European companies can profit from it - a new network will help them. We talked to the initiators.

Becks and Melitta may be high-profile brands, but international food and beverage companies also manufacture lots of other products in Bremen and Bremerhaven. Here are ten examples.

The state of Bremen covers 420 square kilometres and is home to around 670,000 people. Almost 22,000 companies provide more than 325,000 jobs. Below, we introduce some of the strong sectors that that make Bremen such an excellent business location.

Bremen's ports are the engine that drives economic activity throughout the region. But do you know which goods arrive and depart, and where? We have taken a look around the eight port complexes in Bremen.

Bremen’s economy relies on logistics, whether road, sea, or rail. But do you know how many goods arrive in Bremen every year? Or how tall the tower would be if all the shipping containers in Bremerhaven were stacked on top of each other? We have crunched the numbers.

Experience Silicon Valley at first hand with Bremeninvest! Tim Ole Jöhnk, our man in Silicon Valley, is inviting representatives from the food and supply chain industries to join a delegation on a visit to Silicon Valley. More on this and other exciting stories in the September newsletter.

Will it soon be our robot colleague who greets us in the mornings? Robots will be helping us out at our desks in future, and this is already becoming a reality in Bremen.

Coworking, agile working, design thinking: what do these buzzwords mean? We put this question to expert Sven Hermann, who talks to us about the concept known as ‘New Work’ and what kind of companies might benefit from it.

For a long time, import duties prevented producers from selling anything other than raw beans to Europe. Bremerhaven entrepreneur Felix Ahlers supports a Cooperative which covers the entire value chain and has created 120 jobs in Ethiopia.

Steel producer ArcelorMittal is employing a digital strategy that could also be of interest to SMEs – including when it comes to artificial intelligence.

Bremen-based start-up cellumation has already won various awards for its invention, but now the company is really taking off. It has developed a new conveyor system called Celluveyor, whose modular construction makes it significantly more flexible and means it requires less space than conventional systems.

Bremen without logistics – inconceivable! But what do the more than 1,000 companies that make up the sector actually do? We introduce ten logistics firms.

Logistics is the backbone of the German economy. There are few places where this is more obvious than in Bremen and Bremerhaven, which is why companies are keen to base themselves here.

Companies that are largely unknown but are market leaders in their field – those are hidden champions. Which of these twelve hidden champions from Bremen do you know?

The colours of the local football team are not the only thing that's green about Bremen, as you'll see when you take a stroll around its parks and open spaces. A look at the statistics shows that Bremen is the greenest city in Germany.

The ESA Business Incubation Centre (BIC) Northern Germany is a new beacon project for the aerospace sector in Bremen.

It is anything but everyday that a Libyan comes to Bremen to found a company here. But Tamim Fannoush has good reasons to choose the Hanseatic city as the starting point for his European business. And they are not only economic in nature.

In January 2018, WFB Wirtschaftsförderung Bremen GmbH opened an office in Ho Chi Minh City. Bremen was the first federal state with its own representative office in Vietnam. Manuel Kühn, WFB Project Manager International Settlement, explains in an interview why this proved to be a really good idea.

Is this what the salesman of the future looks like? With "Pepper", the Bremen-based start-up Blackout Technologies develops unique software based on artificial intelligence throughout Europe.

Werder goalkeeper Jiri Pavlenka owes his job to artificial intelligence. He was designed by the team of JUST ADD AI. Founder Roland Becker tells us how other medium-sized companies already benefit from AI today.

Artificial intelligence is regarded as an absolute growth topic - should every company jump on the bandwagon now? No, says Bastian Diedrich from the Bremen digital agency hmmh, but he makes an important restriction.

Bremen: Down-to-earth, yet always ready to surprise you. An attractive place to live, a city through which we can move easily and without stress. People from different cities and countries tell us why they fell in love with Bremen and have made their lives here.

A company founder lives for his or her idea – no distance is too far and no obstacle too high. Four foreign entrepreneurs in Bremen share their passion for their vision.

Jiani Chen recently moved to Bremen. The energetic young Chinese woman founded the start-up App CN in the Hanseatic city and is now looking to kick-start her international business. She loves things about Bremen that many locals would take for granted.

Sometimes you have to learn from other people's mistakes and trust your instincts. That is what Muhammad-Farhan Aslam believed when he took over his father's business. And it turned out to be one of many good decisions that he made.

AI, machine learning, neural networks – the topic of artificial intelligence is full of jargon. We provide some simple definitions to guide you.

Bremen-based Flyline can look back on two decades of success and expansion. The British Airways (BA) subsidiary began as a call centre with a 30-strong workforce. Today, Flyline employs around 400 people at Bremen airport.

Many companies fail to choose the right approach when it comes to trademarks and Intellectual property right protection in general, according to Bremen lawyer Dr Eckhard Ratjen – not just in Germany, but also particularly when entering markets in other countries. But with the right strategy, many problems can be avoided from the outset.

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of everyday life, and Bremen-based companies are leading the way. We have put together a ‘who’s who’ in artificial intelligence in Bremen.

Whether they involve flying around virtual spaces or manipulating reality, augmented and virtual reality open up new dimensions. A number of companies in Bremen are working on these technologies, and one of them is even the global leader in its market.

From one side of the Atlantic to the other: two graduates from New York University travel to Bremen for a research internship – and immediately want to stay.

In this interview, Andreas Heyer, CEO of Bremeninvest, explains the nature of the Überseestadt property market, the area’s positioning within the sector, and his assessment of its future prospects.

Almost half of all coffee beans imported into Germany pass through Bremen’s ports. Coffee roasters such as Lloyd Caffee and Cross Coffee have helped to cement the image of Bremen as Germany’s coffee capital.

Bremen’s IT sector is an important pillar of the local industry. We introduce ten IT service providers.

Bremen is Germany’s sixth-largest industrial hub in terms of revenue. Whether the sector is aerospace, food, automotive, shipping or steel production, Bremen has always been a major player.

The best of both worlds. A young Indian from Bremen is helping German engineering to benefit from India’s factory capacities and vice versa. And everything is completely digitalised – with one click in real time, an order can be sent straight to the Indian factory. The benefit for manufacturers is huge.

At her company Sabine Grimm Yacht & Interior Design, the passionate sailor from Hastedt, Bremen, offers 65,000 fabric samples – to the delight of yacht designers from all over the world who can find many rarities in Grimm’s treasure trove of textiles.

Bremen is expanding. Several construction projects will reshape the city centre. The 2018 Bremen property market report – an overview of office, logistics and retail properties, and of investment market trends – confirms that the city is an attractive location for investors and developers.

Europe’s largest terminal for breakbulk and heavy-lift cargo is located in Neustadt port. After Antwerp, Bremen’s ports are the second most important transshipment hub in Europe for forestry products, steel products and machinery. The federal state of Bremen is preparing for the future in a highly competitive market.

To the south of Bremerhaven, plans are taking shape for a new business and industrial park that will fulfil strict sustainability criteria. Situated on what is known as the Luneplate, a site close to the largest nature conservation area in the state of Bremen, the park is set to become the home of companies operating in the green economy.

How is the role of media and other forms of communication changing in society? What are the resulting challenges? The international MA in Digital Media and Society, which launches at the University of Bremen in time for the winter semester, aims to provide the answers.

Global commerce would be impossible without shipping, and wind farms at sea are indispensable for energy provision on land. Yet maritime transport systems and infrastructure are exposed to a wide range of risks. The German Aerospace Centre’s (DLR) new institute in Bremerhaven aims to identify these risks and work with businesses to develop safeguards.

Airbus is a global trailblazer in the field of 3D printing, and the aerospace company has established a technology centre for this new production method in Bremen. This is one of many reasons why the Hanseatic city has become a hub for 3D printing in Europe.

We don’t normally get to see Littelfuse’s products. And yet there’s hardly any electronic device that doesn’t require components from this global market leader. The European headquarters of the US firm are located in Bremen. And they’re far more than just a sales office.

Our city centre is evolving. Bremen is creating affordable and desirable residential areas, offices and retail space. The city is set to get a more modern look thanks to projects near the main train station, in new districts and right by the river.

Good ideas may be rare, but imitators are easy to find. Which makes it all the more important to secure patents for new inventions. Bremen-based InnoWi helps companies and the research community to register new patents, and is also on hand to provide advice and access to funding.

Exciting times in Überseestadt, Bremen’s New Harbour District. Large parts of the old 400 metre long Schuppen 3 building are to be demolished to make way for a new quarter featuring a mix of apartments, offices, retail units and services. And there is a good reason why it will be called EuropaQuartier.

It was a cold February evening when Paramjit Kohli first came to Bremen from India – and he loved it immediately. Read on to find out why he founded a company here and what lessons he has learned over the past year.

Stathis Stasinopoulos built his first bike so that he could get to and from work in Athens more easily. At the time, he could not have imagined that his idea would see him set up his own business in Bremen. We visited the entrepreneurial engineer in his new workshop in the north of Bremen.

Fish fingers have been made in Bremerhaven for almost 60 years. Over this period, they have withstood all food trends and are more popular today than ever before. On average, each German consumer eats 24 of them a year. And they were probably made in Bremerhaven, the fish finger capital.

The construction of the complex new EcoMaT research and technology centre at Airport-Stadt Bremen is at an advanced stage. Prospective tenants include Airbus and Testia, as well as a number of leading medium-sized businesses and scientific institutions. After the topping-out ceremony, work will get under way on the interior of the building.

The depths of the ocean remain one of the last great mysteries on Earth. What is the precise composition of the seafloor? What flora and fauna inhabit it? Where has the delicate balance of the ecosystem been seriously disrupted? We still don’t have complete answers to any of these questions, but four young scientists from Bremen are aiming to change that.

Bremeninvest is currently managing the fifth construction phase at Bremen Industrial Park, scheduled for completion in 2020, and has already taken reservations from several companies. Businesses that have already relocated here are investing in their growth and their future.

Bremen is known in China as one of the world’s major ports. But that’s just one of the factors attracting Chinese companies to our Hanseatic city.

Bremen has the right location to suit any company, from the logistics sector at the Cargo Distribution Center (GVZ) to research institutes at the Technology Park and international companies at Bremen Airport-Stadt. Or perhaps you are looking for more of a mix of sectors to stimulate creativity? We can show you the right business park to suit your needs.

Even Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible would find it difficult to break into this data centre. Metre-thick concrete walls are just one of the many security measures protecting this bunker.

On the south side of the Europahafen, it’s full steam ahead for a new urban development showpiece – the Überseeinsel peninsula. Formerly the business premises of Kellogg’s, this 15-hectare pocket of land now has investment backing from Europa Immobilien GmbH, represented by Dr Klaus Meier. In our interview, he talks about opportunities, challenges, and visions for the future for the Überseeinsel.

Unloading shipping containers requires manual work, which is pretty unusual in the automated and digitalised world of logistics. But a Bremen-based research project aims to change all this with its IRiS robot.

How will we be working in the future? Daimler’s Innolab in Bremen’s Überseestadt district provides an answer to this question. And anyone can come and see it.

The Bremen Hansalinie Industrial Estate is ideally situated for businesses in the automotive industry, located in the immediate vicinity of the Mercedes-Benz plant in Bremen just off the A1 autobahn. But it also offers a number of benefits for service providers, trading companies and the skilled trades. If you want to set up business here, you need to act quickly.

Artificial intelligence isn’t just a matter of computer programming. It’s a challenging question: how can a robot successfully deal with real, unpredictable surroundings? For 30 years, solutions to this problem have been developed at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). This Bremen-based facility has been so successful that its employees are now founding their own company.

In April 2018, Team Beverage AG moved its headquarters from Wildeshausen in Lower Saxony to Bremen. The company provides services to the drinks industry in wholesale, retail and the catering and convenience sectors. Now, its success story is set to continue at Bremen Airport-Stadt with the relocation of its head office and 90 or so employees.

Huong Thi Hoang is the new voice of Bremen’s economic development agency in Vietnam. The country has one of the world’s fastest growing economies and is extremely popular with international investors. Now, Hoang visited Bremen for the first time – and had a big surprise right on her first day.

Tizz & Tonic: Two sisters from Canada are producing and selling sustainable and organic underwear in the centre of Bremen. But what was it that attracted them to Bremen? We caught up with the two well-travelled fashion designers to find out.

Bremen Airport-Stadt is an international transport hub and a centre of excellence for the aerospace industry and for research and learning. It occupies a leading position among Germany’s airport locations. Here are ten benefits that Bremen Airport-Stadt offers.

Hard facts take top priority when it comes to the choice of location for international or domestic businesses. But the faster we feel comfortable outside the workplace in the everyday routines and culture of a foreign country, the sooner we feel at home. In addition to trade, science – and of course its port, Bremen has plenty to offer when it comes to quality of life.

Home to 19,500 on-campus students, several research institutes and high-tech companies, parks, hotels, restaurants, cafés and the Universum Bremen science centre, the technology park in Bremen is one of Germany’s most successful. So what is the secret behind its 30 years of success?

In December 2014, ORTEC GmbH moved from Lower Saxony to Bremen. The software specialist hoped to strengthen its market position by moving to the city’s Überseestadt district. Around three and a half years later, we got in touch with the company again to ask whether the move has been a success.

Shipbuilding is a key sector of Bremen’s maritime economy. Bremen and Bremerhaven are home to prestigious international suppliers as well as innovative young companies. We present 13 companies involved in shipbuilding from all stages of the process chain.

Chinese honey has come a long way – and in January 2018, ten containers full arrived in Bremerhaven from China. But is it actually organic? It certainly is – Lin Zhao, managing director of Dewin, works closely with laboratories in Bremen to confirm the quality of his honey. The proximity to these laboratories was a deciding factor in his choice of location for his business.

Wind energy, geophysics, translation, design and communication – we portray five diverse women, who have successful careers and shared their fascinating stories with us. What is their industry and working life like? What motivates them? Why Bremen?

The production line hardly ever stops at the second-largest Mercedes Benz plant in the world. Thousands of components have to be delivered to the right place at the right time – there is no room for errors or delays. LOREL Logistik GmbH undertakes a huge logistics operation every day to ensure that everything runs like clockwork.

You are or want to become self-employed – but you do not know where to start? In this video, we show you how the Unternehmensservice Bremen helps you to deal with official approval procedures, forms and funding.

When it comes to Brexit it’s not about a hard-fought international contest to attract relocating businesses; it’s about coming together to manage the change, says Andreas Gerber of Bremeninvest in our interview.

Bremeninvest has announced the opening of a representative office in Ho Chi Minh City in the hope of pushing up trade cooperation in Vietnam. The agency operates as a link between the German state of Bremen and Vietnam in two-way trade and business activities.

Fatih Özdemir has furniture made in Turkey and sells it to customers mainly in Africa and the Middle East. In theory, he could run his business from anywhere in the world, but there are good reasons why he chose to relocate to Bremen and found Brefeo Hanse GmbH.

Savannah’s economic developers have done their homework: in their search for German partner cities for trade and cooperation, they have put Bremen at the top of their list. During a visit to Bremen, the city’s representatives explained why the relationship with Bremen and Bremerhaven is so important to them.

Bremen-based company Home & Marine works in a sector that generates huge interest, but is often shrouded in secrecy – it builds complex entertainment systems for mega-yachts. The company is reluctant to speak about customers and orders, but since it was founded just over 25 years ago, Home & Marine has worked on more than 100 yachts.

Investors are increasingly looking to Bremen. For three years in a row, the city has registered record-breaking levels of domestic and foreign investment. Bremeninvest's 2017 real estate report shows what makes Bremen such an attractive location for investors.

There is a buoyant mood among investors and project developers with regard to Bremen’s real estate market, which has seen a record take-up of office space and the lowest vacancy rate for ten years. Bremeninvest’s 2017 real estate report shows how construction activity, occupancy rate and prices are developing in Bremen’s office property market.

Dr Zareer Dadachanji was not going to wait around for Brexit to happen, and has held a German passport since the beginning of the year. He firmly believes that Brexit has no plus points. He and his wife have chosen to locate their new business – Model Quant Solutions – in Bremen, despite the fact that the company’s customers are mainly based in the UK.

Low property prices and a good infrastructure – logistics real estate in Bremen is the sort of thing many investors dream of. But anyone wanting to take advantage needs to be quick, because vacant spaces are getting increasingly rare, as the 2017 real estate report from Bremeninvest shows.

You rarely get the opportunity to try out musical instruments when you buy them online. Bremen-based start-up TonePedia has developed a piece of software that allows musicians to properly compare guitars, bass guitars, amplifiers and effect products online. This saves time and reduces the number of returns and the associated cost.

Quinoa is already very popular, but hardly anyone in Europe is familiar with purple corn powder. Peruvian Alejandro Leon has founded a company in Bremen, Albrecht und R GmbH, through which he imports and export fruits and vegetables from South America, and he is a firm believer in the health benefits of eating purple corn.

Space technologies have advanced greatly in recent years, leading to increasing demands from the business and research sectors. To meet these requirements, Bremen University now offers unique master’s degrees in Space Engineering and Space Sciences and Technologies.

Buoyant mood thanks to record take-up rate, encouraging market trends and strong occupancy levels. The 2017 Bremen property market report shows once again that the city is an attractive location for investors and developers.

Formula Student is a world-wide competition for self-built racing cars, with the season’s final race held at Hockenheim. A Bremen-based team has been taking part in the competition with an electric racing car since 2013, and their ambitious goal is to break into the top ten.

If astronauts want to get all the way to Mars one day, they’ll need food supplies for the journey. Part of the solution could be to grow their own grains and bake bread themselves. Bremen start-up Bake in Space is on the verge of making this vision a reality.

Is this what sales assistants of the future will look like? Bremen start-up company Blackout Technologies develops software based on artificial intelligence, unlike any other software in Europe. Before long, we’ll be greeted by their robot Pepper in shops, at trade fairs or even in care homes. We visited Bremen’s robot lab to find out more.

Stathis Stasinopoulos was unable to find the perfect folding bicycle for his commute to work across Athens. So he developed his own. The bike, called ‘Folding Project’, is lightweight and comfortable and folds up in five seconds. This has given Stasinopoulos an unexpected new direction in life.

The research alliance ROBEX is sending robots up active volcanoes and down into the deepest and darkest seas. Working across disciplines, the 120 scientists of the 16 institutes involved are breaking new ground on this project. They have been eagerly waiting to find out what has happened to the TRAMPER diving robot, which has been exploring the deep seas around Spitsbergen for a year. Now they are ready to bring it back.

This new master’s degree at Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences prepares students for the future and offers them excellent job prospects.

As both Airbus and Mercedes already know, when it comes to infrastructure and commercial property, businesses should look to Germany’s north-west. To Bremen, to be more precise. The Hanseatic city boasts the following five locational factors.

BLG Logistics Group is a major player in logistics with 18,000 employees. It established the Digilab in Bremen as a core element of its digitalisation. The company’s premises are reminiscent of start-ups in Silicon Valley, and there are good reasons for that.

Irina Lucke has been at the helm of WAB since December 2016. We talked about her role in the german-wide trade association and the challenges that an ever-changing business and regulatory environment poses for the international wind energy industry.

In June 2016, the UK voted in favour of Brexit, and the exit negotiations are currently in progress. Which industry sectors in Bremen will be particularly hit, and what effect will Brexit have on the Hanseatic city?

FabLab Bremen invites visitors to learn about new manufacturing technologies and try their hand at everything from laser cutters to printing and programming. Digital technology enthusiasts of all ages and programmers of all abilities are welcome here. And it is not long before they can put what they have learnt to good use.

Bremen's sweetest side is made of chocolate. No matter whether it’s milk or dark chocolate, nougat or marzipan. Take a walk around Bremen and taste it.

The founders of Mac Panther Materials, two brothers from Bremen, produce an open-cell metal foam for use in a number of different applications. Its secret lies in the production process that is based on a brilliant and yet simple idea.

An engine under the bonnet drives the wheels – this is the configuration that has been powering cars for over a hundred years. However, wheel hub motors – i.e. motors in the hub of the wheel, not under the bonnet – promise many advantages. Electric drive systems make this possible.

The digital revolution has reached every branch of industry. Many of the technological trends associated with the Industrial Internet of Things originated in Silicon Valley. Rene van den Hoevel, managing director of the German American Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco, and Christoph Ranze, managing director of encoway GmbH and executive board member of the association bremen digitalmedia, explain why it is not only large corporations who should be looking closely at the epicentre of technological advancement.

In the space of just a few years, the maritime city of Bremerhaven has developed into a service centre for the seafaring and shipbuilding industry. At the centre of it all is the company German Dry Docks, whose managing director, Guido Försterling, has already heralded the era of ‘seafaring 4.0’.

Bionics is the application of forms and functions found in nature to technology. Marine biologist Dr Christian Hamm and his team of researchers in Bremerhaven are leading figures in this field thanks to ELiSE. They are particularly interested in the tiny, yet incredibly complex, diatoms – nature’s experts in lightweight construction.

A new process has been attracting attention in the food industry. Developed by the Bremerhaven Institute for Food Technology and Bioprocess Engineering, the new method enables deep frozen fish to be defrosted in record time. And the fish tastes as fresh as the day it was caught.

For over 15 years, Jacobs University in Bremen has attracted young, talented individuals from all over the world. Students from 106 countries make up a community that contributes to academic achievement and produces graduates that are highly sought after by companies.

Fiona Moore is originally from Burton-on-Trent, near Birmingham, and now works as a freelance translator in Bremen. She fell in love with Bremen in her early twenties. That was back in 2000, but 17 years later she is still as enchanted by the city as she was on the first day. She tells us about settling in Bremen, about her family and about being fortunate to have found a home in here.

Photography studios, workshops and professional kitchens are rarely fully occupied round the clock. So why not let others share them? The german start-up Craftspace brings together providers of production spaces with entrepreneurs, small business owners and artists on a single online platform. It’s an arrangement that benefits everyone.

It’s an adventure playground for kids, an idyllic sanctuary for couples, and a quiet retreat for those looking to escape from stress – from joggers and Nordic walkers to lovers of nature and culture, the Bürgerpark in the centre of Bremen has something for everyone. For the last 150 years, this protected heritage site in the centre of Bremen has relied solely on the support of donations to keep it open and well-maintained.

A great deal of manual labour goes into aircraft construction. Despite this – or perhaps even because of it – Airbus is changing its approach to make increased use of digital technologies. It’s also researching the applications of new manufacturing technologies such as 3D printing. And not a moment too soon, as Airbus’ site manager in Bremen, Dr André Walter, explains in our interview.

GeoSea, a subsidiary of the Belgian DEME group, is helping to construct of some of the largest offshore wind farms in the German North Sea – and in Bremen, the company has found the ideal location to carry out its work.

Art, design and people with disabilities make up the fascinating focus of the work of two young designers from Bremen. Working together with employees from community-based workshops, they develop and improve on designs for handmade products – and are continually thrilled by the potential they see in their co-designers.

Companies wishing to access the European market should be careful about their choice of location. Brexit could result in significantly higher financial and tax burdens for UK-based companies. Under these circumstances, setting up a base on the continent might be a better option. Find out what challenges companies will be facing.

Environmentally friendly manufacturing and ethical standards are the principles on which the fair trade clothing sector is based. Leela Cotton, a successful German-Turkish textile company, produces clothes for children and adults that are not only stylish, but also make a positive contribution to the environment in the way they are manufactured.

Why have so many IT companies chosen to establish themselves in Bremen? We asked five key business figures and researchers from various organisations to tell us what makes the city such an attractive location for the IT sector.

3D imaging with millimetre accuracy for underwater industrial activities and deep sea exploration – company founder Jakob Schwendner has a very clear goal. The first prototype of a camera with brand new sensor technology was built in Canada and presented to industry professionals at the Ocean Business conference in Southampton, United Kingdom, in April.