World Champion Austria Lower Austria
Happy networking in Lower Austria Platforms and networks for businesses and science are part of Lower Austria’s economic strategy.
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© Linse 2/Roland Voraberger
or 20 years Lower Austria’s efforts in establishing and running business clusters went by the mission statement “innovation through cooperation”. And this has paid off during the pandemic and also now during the economic recovery. “Our cluster teams are trend scouts,” agree Regional Councillor for Economic Affairs Jochen Danninger and Managing Director Helmut Miernicki. “They are sounding out developments, addressing potential sunrise technologies and presenting them within the various sectors to our partner businesses. It is great to see that after the huge challenges of the past months 34 cooperation projects have been launched in the first half of 2021. This shows us that the upswing has really reached our more than 560 cluster partners.”
Ecoplus Managing Director Helmut Miernicki
1,564 projects, thereof 911 cooperation projects with more than 5,100 project partners, more than 2,200 events with about 98.500 visitors – the figures of the last 20 years prove that the Lower Austrian clusters have been a success. “The figures show that we are on the right track. We are joining forces in a network and developing innovations together in areas where it would hardly be possible for a single company to follow the latest trends and tap the potentials of the latest technologies. This secures the edge in know-how the cluster partners have and also their competitiveness,” Danninger says. Clusters on different topics Ecoplus, Lower Austria’s business agency, is operating clusters for innovative and sustainable construction, foods, plastics and mechatronics – the latter is also implementing the Province’s e-mobility initiative. The clusters focus mainly on cross-company cooperation projects but also qualifications and information. Current cluster projects These projects always reflect economic development. Right now, cooperation projects around digitisation, cycle economy and sustainability are becoming more important. The Green Building Cluster of Lower Austria focuses on digitisation in the construction business. The so-called Building Information Modeling (BIM) supports a digital building model in planning, realising and operating a building. The Food Cluster of Lower Austria has put the focus on the sustainable use of resources, among other things. A cooperation project of the Plastics Cluster tries to turn waste materials from the plastics industry into reusable materials for a cycle economy. And the companies in the Mechatronics Cluster work on overcoming the challenges of decarbonisation. “The pandemic has increased the innovative potential of our cluster partners further – most of them are coming out of the crisis
