News › Good news for Thu­rin­gian pho­to­nics • Minis­ter Tie­fen­see hands over fun­ding notification

On Thurs­day (Janu­ary 28, 2021), Minis­ter of Eco­no­mics Wolf­gang Tie­fen­see han­ded over the fun­ding noti­fi­ca­tion to the office. In the next three years, the minis­try will sup­port the main topics of the cluster’s work with a total of about 800,000 EURO and thus signi­fi­cantly streng­then the net­wor­king acti­vi­ties of the Thu­rin­gian pho­to­nics industry. 

The funds are pro­vi­ded by the Joint Task ›Impro­ve­ment of the Regio­nal Eco­no­mic Struc­ture‹ (GRW) and are finan­ced in equal parts by the fede­ral govern­ment and the Free State. For the cur­rent 100 mem­bers of the clus­ter asso­cia­tion, this means that the coope­ra­tion struc­tures estab­lished over the past 21 years will be fur­ther advan­ced and expan­ded, and topics such as inno­va­tion manage­ment, tech­no­logy com­pe­tence, inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion and pro­mo­tion of young talent can be rai­sed to a new level with more resources.

Strong repre­sen­ta­tion of inte­rests more important than ever

»We are very plea­sed that we were able to con­vince the state govern­ment with our vision for a con­tin­ued suc­cessful pho­to­nics loca­tion«, said Tho­mas Bauer, mana­ging direc­tor of Opto­Net. »Right now, our mem­bers need a strong repre­sen­ta­tion of inte­rests and a variety of ser­vice offe­rings to bring eco­no­mic per­for­mance to pre-cri­sis levels as soon as pos­si­ble.« 

Inno­va­tive for­mats for networking

As fami­liar event and net­wor­king for­mats remain dif­fi­cult, Mana­ging Direc­tor Tho­mas Bauer is rely­ing pri­ma­rily on digi­tal exch­ange for­mats to keep cont­act alive. »We have suc­cessfully mas­te­red the first digi­tal con­fe­rence, and fur­ther inno­va­tive offe­rings are plan­ned for the coming months.« The team, which has a total of five employees, is also working on stra­te­gies and pro­jects to secure young talent, sup­ports play­ers in initia­ting col­la­bo­ra­ti­ons and is actively invol­ved in tech­no­logy marketing.