A Bremen-based SME is bringing excellent sound and picture quality to mega-yachts

David Zhou first came to Bremen seven years ago. The Corona crisis has given the lighting manufacturer undreamt-of tailwind - and virtually swept his warehouse empty. This is not the only reason why he feels right at home in Bremen.

Kathrin and Mark Patel from Bremen are among the most successful designers in their chosen field. Their carpet and wallpaper collections have received numerous awards and the two collaborate with leading manufacturers. The secret of their success? All of their work tells a story.

Bremen is one of Germany's major industrial hubs, and many international companies base their headquarters and main offices in the city. Here are ten examples that may not be familiar to everyone.

Experts speak of Bremen and Bremerhaven as the "food capitals of Germany", and this hardly seems an exaggeration for the second strongest manufacturing sector in the federal state. What would you like? Coffee or fish?

At the end of May 2020, JDE Peets followed in the footsteps of other successful businesses from Bremen and made its initial public offering. We have put together a brief introduction to exchange-traded companies from the region and their business models.

Social distancing, masks and hygiene – a variety of different measures help to slow down the spread of coronavirus. Bremen company Statex has developed another tool to add to the armoury. Its copper tape ensures that viruses on door handles and other surfaces are deactivated faster.

Bremen and Taiwan share a long-standing friendship. The Hanseatic city has been in close contact with the Asian island for more than 30 years. New opportunities in Far Eastern markets are opening up for Bremen-based companies despite the coronavirus crisis.

Co-working spaces are very much in vogue. Especially in large cities, more and more people are renting space in modern office communities - for hours, days or months. We take a look at the co-working spaces in Überseestadt and answer key questions: How much is the rent? What do I get in return? And of course: Where do I get my coffee?

Fibre composites have become a permanent fixture in everyday life. The Bremen Fibre Institute (FIBRE) has been working on these materials for five decades, and has gained another strong partner this year in the form of the ECOMAT research centre.

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.

Products made in Bremen can be found in many everyday objects, and most of us are likely to come into contact with one or more on a daily basis. Read on to find out what they are.

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.

Storage batteries are an increasingly popular way of making energy generated by PV systems available around the clock. That is good for the environment and helps to keep costs down. Storage battery manufacturer Powertrust is looking to tried and trusted technology and giving it a new lease of life.

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.

Not many people could name a manufacturer of metrology and testing equipment, but without their products we would not have space probes, aircraft or medical equipment. And Bremen is home to a whole host of these specialist companies.

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.

Enquiry, quote, order, delivery, payment – that’s the standard procedure the world over, but it doesn’t always run smoothly if the business links involved span thousands of miles. So in 2015, the Chinese Linhorn Group opened its only European branch in Bremen in order to establish better contacts with its suppliers.

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?

In 2019, many people are seeing their energy costs rising yet again. Intelligent energy solutions that use solar panels and storage batteries can save quite a bit on electricity. And ADLER Solar from Bremen know how.

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.

Since 2011, economic relations with Turkish partners have been strengthened through the Bremeninvest office in Izmir. Kolja Umland, Project Manager for International Settlements and Erol Tüfekҫi, Director of the Bremeninvest Office in Izmir, report on the current situation.

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.

Orthopaedic shoe manufacturers Indorf Orthopädie-Schuhtechnik GmbH & Co. KG in Bremerhaven successfully combine traditional products and processes with the latest advances in 3D printing.

Extreme precision is the norm at Eickworth Modellbau. Major automotive companies and aerospace manufacturers rely on the services of this Bremen company whenever something needs to be accurate down to a hundredth of a millimetre.

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.

Esteban Bayro-Kaiser has big plans for his start-up, WearHealth. And he has no doubt that Bremen can become a leading hub for artificial intelligence technology. But what made this globetrotter choose Bremen?

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Batteries are indispensable in our day-to-day life. But when they run out of energy, they become an environmental challenge. As the global leader in the recycling of household batteries, Bremerhaven-based company Redux GmbH is ready to take on this challenge. What’s more, the firm has now developed a method to deal with lithium-ion batteries.

Whenever you need to dispose of old clothes, shoes or electronic waste, you will often throw them into a recycling container. Most people have no idea that a large number of these containers are made by Bremen-based company JO-BA, which has established itself as a brand across Europe. Now the company has its sights set on greater sustainability.

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.

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?

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.

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.

A growing number of companies are becoming more aware of their social and environmental footprint, and are looking for ways to act with greater environmental and social responsibility. Germany’s north-west is set to become the national centre for social entrepreneurship in logistics. A new platform is under development and the first round of events is being planned to achieve this goal.

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’.

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.

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.

Weatherproof displays for transport services, and screens that don’t produce glare in bright sunlight – these are just some of the devices provided by AlfaNet Computer und Electronic Handels GmbH, a Bremen-based company founded nearly 25 years ago by Thomas Lie.

Three continents, four countries, and Bremen at the centre of it all – a start-up could hardly be more international. The young entrepreneurs Ahmed Cheema and Stefan Kuzmanovski want to make sustainable manufacturing and the use of ethically sourced materials standard practice.

How will the UK’s impending exit from the EU affect the logistics sector? Günther Hörbst, Managing Director of the Via Bremen Foundation, on the economic links between the United Kingdom and the EU

BLG LOGISTICS GROUP AG & Co. KG’s AutoTerminal in Bremerhaven is a record-breaking automotive hub. Every year, the terminal handles some 2.3 million vehicles. But that’s not all.

For 30 years, the Cargo Distribution Centre in Bremen has delivered excellence – as an investment location and a logistics hub. Today more than 150 companies employing approximately 8,000 people are based at the site. It offers direct links to the ports, the autobahn and has a close proximity to Bremen City Airport.