Despite all the crises, Offenbach is starting the new year with prospects that have not been so good for decades.

The Frankfurt-based biotech shooting star Biospring, after the announcement at the beginning of last year that it would build a production facility on the Offenbach innovation campus, has now done it again: the owner-managed company has also acquired a plot of land that is three times the size.

Jochen Remert

Airport editor and correspondent Rhein-Main-Süd.

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In the final phase, up to 1,500 jobs are to be created in four separate production facilities on the former Clariant site in eastern Offenbach, primarily for highly qualified men and women.

Biospring produces active ingredients for pharmaceutical and biotech companies and claims to be a leader in the manufacture and rapid amplification of synthetic gene fragments without which certain therapeutics and diagnostics would not be possible.

With the settlement of Biospring, the Offenbach business development agency and, above all, the chief economic promoter and mayor Felix Schwenke (SPD) succeeded in the second big coup in terms of the resettlement of innovative companies.

The first was when the valve and control technology manufacturer Samson AG, which is active all over the world, settled on the innovation campus.

Innovation campus points towards the future

The specialists for intelligent valves will even move their headquarters from Frankfurt to Offenbach.

The city will gain around 2,000 jobs in this way.

This move alone is considered the most important industrial settlement in Offenbach in the past 60 years.

The prospect of Biospring moving in is no less positive for the city, which has been heavily burdened by the decline of the old industries for many years.

The company fits in perfectly with the strategy that Schwenke issued for the 179-year-old chemical site after the city had acquired it from the Swiss Clariant Group after lengthy negotiations: it was to be turned into a forward-looking industrial park.

However, according to his own statements, even Schwenke hardly dared to hope that it would happen so quickly, and with two internationally successful companies like Samson and Biospring.

He sees the two innovative companies and thus also the Offenbach innovation campus as a model of an industrial awakening that is necessary in Germany.

Of course, it will still take a few years before the hoped-for trade tax revenue starts to flow.

One can believe that Schwenke, who was born in Offenbach, is really happy for his hometown, which is occasionally presented as a basement child next to the cosmopolitan city of Frankfurt.

The knowledge that these achievements can also be of great benefit to him if he decides to run for a second term as mayor will certainly fuel this joy.