Investment location Saxony-Anhalt in January 2012

 

Saxony-Anhalt's industry is growing in its domestic and international business: Saxony-Anhalt's industry benefited from an upturn in 2011. As told by a spokesperson from the Federal Statistical Office, the around 670 larger companies in the state generated a total turnover of just under 189 million euros in the first half of the year. The majority of this turnover was generated domestically with 13.5 billion euros, while 5.5 billion euros were generated by selling products abroad.Find out more about the figures concerning the state's economic situation here.The rail vehicle manufacturer VIS Halberstadt has received a multi-million order from Finland. VIS Halberstadt will modernise and equip ten trams for the city of Helsinki. The order will be worth 4.5 million euros, according to Managing Director Dirk Ballerstein. Together with other orders, around 100 jobs are thus assured until 2013.The automotive supplier ElringKlinger AG has bought metal casing supplier Thawa GmbH, headquartered in Thale, Saxony-Anhalt, for 3.0 billion euros. The company was sold to ElringKlinger AG on 3rd January 2012. With the acquisition, ElringKlinger consolidates its activities in the waste gas purification technology sector. Thawa is principally a sub-contractor and manufacturing partner for Swiss waste gas specialist Hug Engineering AG, also bought by ElringKlinger in May 2011.Read more.Contego Packaging Group in Saxony-Anhalt is expanding: after a construction phase lasting several months, the British Contego Packaging Group, one of the leading European manufacturers of pharmaceutical packaging leaflets, celebrated the roofing ceremony of its new production hall in Bitterfeld-Wolfen on 20th December 2011. Contego plans to finish off the construction measures for the approx. 6500m² factory by mid-2012 and to also carry out production in the new factory halls in 2012.Read more.GISA GmbH from Halle (Saale) is taking over the office IT landscape of the largest East German gas provider, Verbundnetz Gas AG. With a volume of over 40 million euros, the order will extend over several years. For GISA, this is the largest order in the company's history, making 2011 the most successful year ever for the IT company from Halle.More and more passengers are choosing to set off for their holidays from Leipzig Halle Airport. Since the last quarter, there has been an improvement in performance compared to the same period of the previous year, according to airport Managing Director Dierk Näther. He spoke about "positive effects" including those created by the routes offered by Ryanair. After downturns in previous years, the number of passengers in November alone was said to have increased by more than seven per cent compared to the same month of the previous year to 170,720 passengers.Read more.Saxony-Anhalt in pole position for social media: the consulting company Faktenkontor carried out the "Social Media-Atlas 2011" study with market research company Toluna in cooperation with the IMWF [Institut für Management- und Wirtschaftsforschung]. Overall, 4,230 German internet users were questioned for this study. The study showed that Saxony-Anhalt is anything but a state of social media phobes. According to the study, the percentage of social media users in Saxony-Anhalt was 66%. Compared to other federal states, this puts Saxony-Anhalt in 6th place. In direct comparison with the other new federal states, the result is even better: the early birds in Saxony-Anhalt are in pole position!

 

Investitionsstandort Sachsen-Anhalt im Januar 2012

Minister President Dr. Reiner Haseloff officially launched the new regional initiative "Electric mobility and lightweight construction" in Magdeburg today. With this initiative, the regional government has got together with the economic and science sectors to concentrate and accelerate all existing activities in the area of electric mobility, as well as create new ones. The intention is for Saxony-Anhalt to become a leading production and research location for drive technology and energy carriers within five years. Officially, the regional initiative is known as "Electric mobility, Light and Intelligent – an initiative for Saxony-Anhalt – ELISA".

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The “BioEconomy” initiative in Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony is one of the five winners in the third Leading-Edge Cluster Competition run by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project, which focuses on the chemical use of biomass, is therefore now to receive up to 40 million euros of funding from the national German government over the next five years. Private industry will provide a matching sum.

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The Saxony-Anhalt company Mercateo has been able to increase its turnover in comparison with the previous year from 79 million to nearly 111 million euros. Not only has the turnover of the B2B company increased by 40 per cent, the range of products in the shop area could be expanded from 5.4 million to over 7 million items. A total of more than five million order items were processed via Mercateo.


A giant furnace for incineration of large components has been put into operation by the annealing plant at Glüherei Magdeburg GmbH. In the future, components made of steel, cast iron or aluminium up to a diameter of 4.80 metres can be processed in Magdeburg in an oversized annealing furnace. The new facility with 80 high-speed burners went into operation on Wednesday. It cost about 900,000 euros.