Munich Airport has embarked on a new future-focused project, LabCampus, which will serve as an innovation centre at the airport campus.
The visionary project will foster cooperation between companies and industries by bringing together leading experts, global companies and startups at the heart of the airport.
“There are 150,000 people at Munich Airport every day: passengers, employees and visitors who are potential customers, business partners and visitors for LabCampus,” said Thomas Weyer, CFO and Director of Infrastructure at Munich Airport. “Nowhere else will you find better connectivity to customers and partners.”
Albert Füracker, the Bavarian State Secretary for Finance – representing Dr. Markus Söder, Chairman of the Munich Airport Supervisory Board – commented: “With LabCampus, Bavaria – which is now already among the leaders in the most respected rankings of places to do business – will become even more attractive. For us, this forward-looking project will ideally complement our clustering policy for high-tech industries and other key sectors. It will showcase a successful and prosperous Bavaria of the future.”
The new campus will offer a unique meeting point for high-tech industries and key sectors working in such areas as aerospace, digitalisation, energy and mobility. Potential key partners include companies such as Siemens and Design Offices and research organisations including Fraunhofer Institute, Friedrich Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and UnternehmerTUM, the startup incubator of the Technical University of Munich.
Munich Airport will serve as the curator, as FMG, the airport operating company, will ensure the appropriate mix of industries and companies bring the right partners together and develop the campus infrastructure and utilities. FMG will establish a separate subsidiary to manage the project.
Dr. Michael Kerkloh, CEO and President of Munich Airport, says: “In the age of globalisation and digitalisation, airports have to blaze new trails to find and retain competitive advantages. In that regard, LabCampus is a step that anticipates the future.”
The development of the unique innovation site in the north-west of the airport will proceed in several stages. Quadrant 1 will start with the construction of office buildings and FMG’s own Airport Academy. Also part of LabCampus is the Information Security Hub, dedicated to the fight against cybercrime, which opened at the end of January. An important priority is to ensure that the planned uses of the campus do not compete with local economies in the airport region. With that in mind, the city of Freising, on whose land LabCampus will be built, had a seat at the planning sessions right from the start. The project will be fully funded by Munich Airport.
