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The Hanseatic Silicon Valley? New digital centre to be built in Hamburg

Watch out, Berlin. Construction on a digital centre in the Hanseatic city state is set to start in a few days, attracting big companies and start-ups alike.

Published: 3 May 2018 15:59 CEST
The Hanseatic Silicon Valley? New digital centre to be built in Hamburg
An conceptual image of the new hub. Image: Hammerbrooklyn.DigitalCampus

The hub, located between Hamburg’s main railway station and HafenCity quarter, is being billed as a place where innovative solutions for the city are to be devised and tested out.

Set to open in early 2019, “Hammerbrooklyn.DigitalCampus” is meant to be a place where companies, start-ups, and movers and shakers in various industries can work together with city authorities on site and develop ideas for Hamburg's digital future. 

Companies such as Deutsche Bahn, Siemens and Volkswagen have already signed up with plans to work on mobility concepts, having rented out a space at the centre for at least five years, reports the Hamburger Morgenpost.

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“The guiding idea at Hammerbrooklyn is to develop, try out and learn something new,” co-founder of the project, Mathias Müller-Using, told the Hamburger Abendblatt.

“This is where the city of the future is to be conceived,” Müller-Using added.

Image: Hammerbrooklyn.DigitalCampus

The ambitious and costly project, which will profit from a total of €150 million in investments over the next ten years, has generally been met with applause from politicians, according to the Hamburger Abendblatt.

Frank Horch (independent), the Hanseatic city’s senator for economics, has encouraged businesses to get involved.

“Hamburg must be innovative and creative to be internationally competitive,” Horch said, adding that “it is especially important that companies and organizations seize the challenges and opportunities of digitalization for their own benefit.”

Head of Hamburg's central Mitte district, Falko Droßmann of the Social Democrats (SPD), said he was already looking forward to the completion of the hub in 2019.

Pilot projects at the centre will focus on smart city and smart mobility concepts, including augmented and virtual reality, block chain technology and 3D printing.

These projects will play a key role in implementing Hamburg’s strategy as host of the Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) World Congress in 2021.

Once the 50,000-square-metre hub opens its doors members of the public will also be able to visit.

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ENVIRONMENT

Sweden’s SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

The Swedish steel giant SSAB has announced plans to build a new steel plant in Luleå for 52 billion kronor (€4.5 billion), with the new plant expected to produce 2.5 million tons of steel a year from 2028.

Published: 2 April 2024 13:44 CEST
Sweden's SSAB to build €4.5bn green steel plant in Luleå 

“The transformation of Luleå is a major step on our journey to fossil-free steel production,” the company’s chief executive, Martin Lindqvist, said in a press release. “We will remove seven percent of Sweden’s carbon dioxide emissions, strengthen our competitiveness and secure jobs with the most cost-effective and sustainable sheet metal production in Europe.”

The new mini-mill, which is expected to start production at the end of 2028 and to hit full capacity in 2029, will include two electric arc furnaces, advanced secondary metallurgy, a direct strip rolling mill to produce SSABs specialty products, and a cold rolling complex to develop premium products for the transport industry.

It will be fed partly from hydrogen reduced iron ore produced at the HYBRIT joint venture in Gälliväre and partly with scrap steel. The company hopes to receive its environemntal permits by the end of 2024.

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The announcement comes just one week after SSAB revealed that it was seeking $500m in funding from the US government to develop a second HYBRIT manufacturing facility, using green hydrogen instead of fossil fuels to produce direct reduced iron and steel.

The company said it also hoped to expand capacity at SSAB’s steel mill in Montpelier, Iowa. 

The two new investment announcements strengthen the company’s claim to be the global pioneer in fossil-free steel.

It produced the world’s first sponge iron made with hydrogen instead of coke at its Hybrit pilot plant in Luleå in 2021. Gälliväre was chosen that same year as the site for the world’s first industrial scale plant using the technology. 

In 2023, SSAB announced it would transform its steel mill in Oxelösund to fossil-free production.

The company’s Raahe mill in Finland, which currently has new most advanced equipment, will be the last of the company’s big plants to shift away from blast furnaces. 

The steel industry currently produces 7 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, and shifting to hydrogen reduced steel and closing blast furnaces will reduce Sweden’s carbon emissions by 10 per cent and Finland’s by 7 per cent.

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