Inter-Cluster Meetings in Berlin-Brandenburg

Berlin, Germany’s capital, brings together history and innovation in a special way. Mid of August, secpho cluster, coordinator of the FoodPackLab project, participated in several inter-cluster meetings, discovering the versatile faces of Berlin and its neighbour region Brandenburg by visiting other clusters from the photonics and food industry, to raise awareness about the FoodPackLab project.

secpho’s Berlin-Brandenburg tour started at Adlershof, the largest science and technology park in Germany. Frank Lerch, Manager of the Optics and Photonics Cluster OpTecBB (one of secpho’s EPRISE consortium partners), explained us the dynamics and existing challenges between the photonics and food as well as agriculture sector in the region of Berlin-Brandenburg. Thus, we learnt about OpTecBB’s new project on AgriPhotonik in collaboration with the Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy (ATB) and the Cluster for Food Industry from Brandenburg, that alligns with the FoodPackLab mission in many ways. Moreover, we visited Gerrit Rössler, head of Photonics Unit, and Silvia Bensel, Innovation Project Manager for Optics and Photonics, from Berlin Partner, and found out about the smart packaging startup INURU that we have invited to the upcoming FoodPackLab Innovation Workshop held on 17 October 2019 in Paris.

Talking of startups, we also visited OPSIN and met the co-founders Jan Saam and Nina Buffi, to learn more about their clean meat initiative. The global consumption of meat is rising while industrial live stock farming causes more and more environmental and ethical concerns. Their production of cultured meat is an attempt to solve the problem of the rising consumption of meat worldwide while industrial live stock farming causes more and more environmental and ethical concerns. It is produced artificially from a small sample of animal cells in a bioreactor – without a large ecological footprint and animal suffering. OSPIN embarks on this journey by providing bioreactor technology and expertise to companies which face this challenging task. 

Last but not least, we had a cross-sectorial cluster meeting at the Economic Development Agency from the region Brandenburg (WFBB) in Potsdam with Detmar Leitow, Manager of the Cluster for Food Industry; Anne Techen, Manager of the Optics and Photonics Cluster; and Christin Wienhold, responsable for Cluster Internationalization. This intercluster meeting enabled us to exchange our experiences and challenges between the photonics and food industry both in Germany and Spain, to explain the FoodPackLab project and to invite their SME’s to the upcoming event in Paris.