
Policies that boost innovation aim to support the ongoing structural change in industrial companies, SMEs and related service providers. Promoting promising technologies is a particularly important part of this. Some technologies feed into each other, such as additive manufacturing, 3D printing, lightweight construction and bionics. The automotive, maritime, and space and aeronautics industries, which all have strong clusters in Bremen, offer great potential for additive manufacturing and 3D printing. But there are also interesting potential uses in healthcare technology and the food sector.
Bremen has pooled local industry and research expertise in the field of lightweight construction and associated key technologies, in particular additive manufacturing, in the ECOMAT research and technology centre at Airport-Stadt Bremen. This gives small and medium-sized enterprises, in particular, access to key technologies and enables them to strengthen their ability to innovate and be competitive.
Quality ingredients
Getting the ECOMAT – the Center for Eco-efficient Materials & Technologies – up and running has certainly not been straightforward. Countless planning and coordination meetings, a complex construction phase, and then a flying start in May 2019. But that is all water under the bridge now. What matters is the commitment and motivation that was evident among the high-calibre users of this research and technology centre as soon as they moved in. It is a bit like cooking: quality ingredients increase the chances of a quality outcome.