ABB to invest €100m in new training campus

A year after announcing its acquisition of Bernecker + Rainer Industrie Elektronik GmbH (B&R), ABB is to invest €100 million in a new innovation and training campus in Eggelsberg, Austria.

According to ABB, the investment lays the foundation for around 1,000 new jobs in Austria.

The new campus will develop technologies based on ABB Ability, in which production will be undertaken autonomously by cloud-connected machines and robots.

With this investment, ABB is delivering on its Next Level strategy, which defines innovation as a key driver of profitable growth. The company invests $1.4 billion in R&D annually, and has a team of around 30,000 R&D and application engineers. B&R has more than 1,000 employees working in R&D and application development.

The new research and development campus will cover 35,000 m² and be home to a number of facilities. Alongside new R&D laboratories, which will develop and test new automation technologies, from industrial control systems up to machine learning and artificial intelligence, there will be an Automation Academy to train and educate customers, partners and employees in these technologies.

The construction of the site is due to begin this summer, with the new campus expected to be up and running in the course of 2020. Once complete, the Eggelsberg site will be one of ABB’s largest research and development centres.

Ulrich Spiesshofer, ABB CEO, says, “B&R has had an excellent start within ABB and has exceeded our expectations. We are well on track to achieve our goal of revenues of more than $1 billion soon.

“With our €100 million investment, we are strengthening this dynamic and the pillars of this success story: innovation and people. In addition to the new research and development capacity, our investment will expand B&R’s Automation Academy, offering customers, partners and employees globally unique education and training programmes.”

“This is a great day for B&R,” adds Josef Rainer, co-founder of B&R. “The smooth integration shows that the company Erwin Bernecker and I founded 39 years ago is in excellent hands. I am delighted that ABB continues to write and accelerate our success story with this historic investment.”