Joint Press Release by the City of Offenbach am Main and SAMSON AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT
The Lord Mayor of Offenbach, Dr. Felix Schwenke, attended the groundbreaking ceremony held today by SAMSON AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT and the City of Offenbach am Main. The celebrations marked the start of construction for the company's new headquarters on the Innovation Campus situated in the northeastern part of the city. One week ago, on 13 June, the city had granted building permission for the first construction stage. Now, the groundwork to build the factory of the future can get underway.
The new factory will be built on a 14.3 ha plot of land and use state-of-the-art production machinery and technology as well as renewable energy sources. SAMSON aims to achieve at least 50 % energy self-sufficiency by using photovoltaic and electric energy storage systems.
Dr. Felix Schwenke, Lord Mayor of Offenbach am Main, commented: "This is a good day for Offenbach as well as for SAMSON. In these challenging times, not many international industrial companies of this size would venture to launch an investment project on such a scale in our region. Moreover, it is uncommon that the MainChange megaproject, which is so important for the entire Rhine-Main region, is right on schedule. This great achievement reflects how well our city authorities in Offenbach operate. It took us less than three months to process and approve the planning application. This was made possible by our municipal offices working at full speed in close cooperation with the professional team at SAMSON."
Offenbach Innovation Campus is enormously relevant to the city's economic strategy. The site, where a chemical company used to operate, uniquely represents the flourishing times as well as the decline of business in the area and the new opportunities that are now being seized. SAMSON's electronics manufacturing unit is scheduled to be up and running in 2024 already. Construction work and the relocation of the company headquarters from Frankfurt to Offenbach are set to be completed by the end of 2026. Once the biotech specialist BioSpring, which will have built its production facilities on the Innovation Campus by the end of this decade, more people will be working in Offenbach than in the heydays of the chemical industry in the 1970s.
Dr. Andreas Widl, Chief Executive Officer of SAMSON AG remarked: "We have all been working towards this day for a long time. For SAMSON, it is not just a matter of relocation. We now have the unique chance to advance the future of our company, move forward the future of Germany and promote the Rhine-Main region as an industrial hub – operating out of Offenbach and in cooperation with the city. This is why we called the project "MainChange": our goal is to lead the way towards a positive change within Germany and create a lighthouse project for sustainable growth and the workplace of the future."
Ms. Daniela Matha, Managing Director of INNO Innovationscampus GmbH & Co. KG, said: "After talks with the Lord Mayor Dr. Schwenke, SAMSON acted fast and became the first company to benefit from the enormous potential of the site. The 36 ha plot of land development is the largest integral plot of land within the city limits available for commercial development purposes in the Rhine-Main region. The City of Offenbach is offering companies wanting to resettle the opportunity to rethink and optimize their production processes and expand. The best thing about this achievement is that we not have to develop new greenfield sites. The ground existing on the former company site is being recycled. This is an ecologically and economically sustainable alternative. SAMSON, a company with highly innovative products and services, is the largest company to settle in Offenbach in the city's post-war history. The construction will boost the development of the Campus and the entire city."
The MainChange project, which is the largest investment and innovation venture ever in the 116-year-long history of the SAMSON, was launched in March 2021 after the City of Offenbach am Main and the company signed the sales contract for the plot of land. SAMSON AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main since 1916, serves the global process engineering industry market with its products, systems and digital solutions to control all kinds of media. It is currently the largest industrial company in Frankfurt. Its focus markets include chemicals and petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, energy and energy distribution as well as applications for hydrogen and industrial gases. The SAMSON Group employs 4600 staff members, around 2000 of them in Frankfurt am Main, and manufactures at 17 sites in nine different countries. The state-of-the art ROLF SANDVOSS INNOVATION CENTER (RSIC) built in 2017 will continue to operate at its current location in Frankfurt am Main.