EDA Chief Says Berlin-Brandenburg is Best Place in Europe to Do Business

Dr. Detlef Stronk: “Brandenburg is the best place in Europe for investors.”

When Dr. Detlef Stronk took over the reins of his new agency, ZAB GmbH, early this year in Potsdam, his mission was: How to attract foreign companies to the State of Brandenburg and how to help start their business quickly after they get here. The ZAB, or the "Brandenburg Economic Development Board" united several important agencies under one roof to be a "one stop agency", the first agency of its kind in Germany. The services of ZAB include helping to shorten approval procedures, worldwide consultation to investors and guidance in all settlement steps. The agency can provide site location, traffic and infrastructure assistance, technology transfer and energy services as well.

"If you need to get permits, call Stronk," he says. "We have the best connections in the country to get quick permits. This is our task." But besides offering expedited approvals for permits, Dr. Stronk says flatly that the best conditions for investment in Europe is in Brandenburg. He cites a private study by an Scottish company concluding that Brandenburg is first in Europe – along with Greece - in terms of investment conditions and doing business at lowest cost – strikes, labor costs, capital costs, land costs, everything. Industrial land costs, for example, only between 6 – 16 German marks per square meter. Office land would be 11 – 25 marks. A house costs 12 – 18 marks per square meter, depending on the proximity to Berlin. The labor force is "punctual, committed and precise", says Stronk, and there is a feeling of solidarity among them that is left over from the old days. Stronk believes such conditions convinced a major German eyeglass firm, Felmann AG, to build a state of the art $68 million production and logistics center in the Brandenburg town of Rathenow that opened this Fall. Another attraction for American companies, according to Stronk, is Brandenburg's long border with Poland.

The Poles are expected to enter the European Union in 2004/2005 and this has major implications, he says, for Eastern Germany and especially for Brandenburg. US companies locating in Brandenburg will have a strong base from which to reach the 120 million people in Eastern European markets. ZAB has targeted six industry groups to pursue: media, information and communications, "Life Sciences" (biotechnology and medical technology), mobility and traffic, energy industry and environmental technology, in addition to, services with emphasis in the trade, handicraft, tourism and food production. But Brandenburg is not waiting for the world to come to it. Last June, the State of Brandenburg opened an office in Farmington Hills, Michigan, first such German office in the Midwest. The office will assist German companies looking for partners and markets in the United States while making it easier for US companies to come to Brandenburg. Dr. Stronk believes that what is interesting in Brandenburg now is the new generation of Eastern German entrepreneurs – between the ages of 25 and 35 – that was not raised in the period of the old planned economy. "These very talented people want to be successful in a market economy," he says. "This is where I see so much potential here for the future." Of course, he adds, a corporate decision about where to locate a new plant is not merely a matter of economics and often takes into account the availability of other factors, such as golf courses. Dr. Stronk says American business executives should know that a new course designed by English golf course architect Nick Faldo has opened in Bad Saarow that is the number one course in all of Germany and one of the best in Europe. In all, there are 18 golf courses to choose from in Brandenburg.

New biotech companies, such as Metanomics AG (see article page 4), are locating in the Berlin-Brandenburg Capital region.

Dr. Stronk, 56, is a former corporate executive who has come back to the public arena to promote what he sees as a new era after Poland joins the European Union. Born in a town now part of Poland, Stronk’s parents were refugees when they arrived in Germany and they raised him in Bavaria. He studied in Bonn and first came to Berlin with a former mayor of Berlin later serving as his State Secretary for Economic Affairs and in other government positions before joining the private sector. When he and his wife decided a few years ago to return to Berlin, Dr. Stronk had a job waiting in the private sector. But, he says, "I felt I had to give something back" and instead opted to work in the public sector again. He is mindful of his own family ties with Poland and says he wants to make a contribution to opening the barriers that have existed for so long between German and Poland. —