With a population of 193,000 and the venue of the “documenta” arts exhibition, Kassel is Hessen’s third-largest city and the main commercial, cultural and social centre of the Northern Hessen region. The excellent range of cultural and leisure activities and the high quality of life delights locals and guests alike. The city is like an attractive landscape with many parks and green areas, and Europe’s largest hill park with Wilhelmshöhe Castle, the Löwenburg and the Herkules, soon to be included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, enjoys worldwide renown.
The strengths of the Kassel economic region have since become well-known, especially in the logistics sector.
Kassel especially attracts international attention as the venue of the “documenta”, the world’s largest contemporary art exhibition. The entire catchment area of the Kassel regional centre has a population of one million people. Kassel makes good use of its location advantages with its road links as well; the main urban centres in the north, west and south of the state can be reached quickly via the existing motorways A7, A44 and A49. And even the long-interrupted link to eastern Germany has been restored by the now almost continually accessible A38 motorway to Halle and Leipzig. The closing of the “gap” in the A44 to Eisenach will shorten driving time to eastern Germany even more. The most important infrastructure project at the moment is probably the construction of the new Kassel-Calden airport for some 250 million Euros.
The Kassel business region has essentially remained a location with the latest manufacturing facilities. The VW plant in Baunatal, northern Hessen’s biggest employer, has blossomed into the pearl of the Volkswagen Group. In Kassel, Bombardier makes high-quality railway locomotives for the international market, and the truck axles for technology leader Daimler and the motor vehicle and transport technology products from Hübner are made here as well. Wintershall AG, Germany’s biggest natural oil and natural gas producer is also based in Kassel, as are the head offices of K+S Aktiengesellschaft, which is now listed in Germany’s share market, the DAX.
The strengths of the Kassel economic region have since become well-known, especially in the logistics sector. Part of this foundation was laid by the decision of the Volkswagen Group to combine its logistics activities in the spare parts business in the Kassel region. Today the Volkswagen manufacturing components centre has over 500,000 square metres of warehouse space and some 2,800 employees in halls OTC 1 to 5. It is already Europe’s largest logistics centre; OTC 6 is already being planned.
And now a second industrial mainstay is to reinforce the Kassel region over the long term. North Hessen is to become a model region for state-of-the-art energy and efficiency technologies. A study presented in December 2007 estimated that some 20,000 highly skilled jobs could be created by 2020. This sector of the economy could play as important a role as the motor vehicle manufacturing industry does today. The Decentralised Energy Supply Technologies Society competence network already combines more than 100 companies, service providers and research centres, including the Fraunhofer Institute for building Physics at the centre for environmentally conscious construction at the University of Kassel and the internationally famous Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology, or IWES. Today no less an organization than the dynamically growing company SMA Solar Technology AG, which has just built the biggest inverter factory in the world for 40 million Euros, is proof that the Kassel economic region is a world leader in the energy technologies of the future.
Important stimuli for regional development in particular come from University of Kassel, which is now considered to be one of Germany’s most entrepreneurial universities. The number of students is continuing to increase and there were more than 20,000 by the beginning of the 2011/2012 winter semester. Concrete investment plans for a science park are currently being prepared as a response to the challenges of demographic change.
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