Cutting Edge Fields

Some of tomorrow's most promising industrial sectors call East Germany home. These are not individual industry sectors as we typically know them, but wide-ranging economic and technology fields populated by a multitude of companies and networks that are already making the future come alive today; and which serve as models for future investment.

Economic trends can often help start-ups in particular to business success. In 2012, more than 137 thousand company start-ups and sideline businesses were registered in the new federal states. Eastern Germany’s front-runners in terms of new company formation were Berlin (48 thousand) and Saxony (32 thousand).

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Cleantech Industry
Nanotechnology and New Materials
Biotechnology
Information Technology
Healthcare and Life Sciences

Cleantech Industry

Eastern Germany is a global cleantech player particularly in the fields of solar and wind energy.

Unparalleled R&D activity and more than EUR 15 billion government investment provide the perfect production conditions for significant international market-share (more than 9.5 percent in 2008). Increased demand from foreign markets is helping give cleantech companies based in Germany a significant market edge.

Nanotechnology and New Materials

Nanotechnology commercialization is concentrated in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin, and Thuringia.

Innovative clusters with a solid nanotech research background have sprung up from the region’s lengthy manufacturing tradition.

In Berlin medical research has reached the nano-level with approximately 40 nanotechnology companies working to develop analytical tools, nanobiotechnology, and nanomedicine and its interface with optics.

Biotechnology

Around 150 of Germany’s 650 biotechnology companies are currently located in Eastern Germany.

Major centers of biotech activity are the metropolitan area of Berlin-Brandenburg (home to some 87 companies) and the “Bio-Saxony” cluster in Leipzig/Dresden (more than 60 companies and around 1,500 employees). Here investors find the optimal surroundings for their medical biotech (70 percent of companies), industrial biotech (20 percent) and plant biotech (10 percent) activities.

Information Technology

Germany’s ICT sector is the European number one in terms of sales, reach, growth potential, research, and personnel.

The Berlin-Brandenburg capital region and the "Silicon Saxony" high-tech region are two sites where the ICT sector is booming.

Intensive network partnerships between companies and research institutions lend a new competitive dynamic to industry development and cross-sector technological applications.

Healthcare and Life Sciences

Serving the largest market in Europe, Germany’s health care sector is a highly attractive market with significant investment growth opportunities.

Around 4.5 million people are employed in the country’s flourishing health care sector.

The roots of this "hidden giant" industry – the health care sector employs four times as many people as Germany’s thriving auto industry - can be found in the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia, and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.

Cleantech Industry

Nanotechnology and New Materials

Biotechnology

Information Technology

Healthcare and Life Sciences

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