May 20, 2010 marked the official ground-breaking of the new Kraft Foods European R&D center in Saclay (Paris region), a symbolic investment by the world’s second largest agri-food business to bolster its innovation capacities in France. But has Kraft made the right choice in opting for the Essonne département?
Watch the interview with Chuck Davis, Vice-President of R&D at Kraft Foods Europe (video)
It seems that Saclay has everything in place to power projects of excellence, with 30,000 students and 12,000 researchers working at 160 private- and public-sector laboratories – an unparalleled concentration of talent amounting to 10% of all research personnel in France. These scores of researchers work in a broad range of fields covering almost every scientific discipline (nanosciences and nanotechnologies, biology and healthcare, climate and the environment, ICT, etc.).
As such, Kraft can draw on the talent pool at Agro Paris Tech, the top higher education institution for the agri-food industry.
The school is one of 23 research and higher education institutions (two universities and one école normale supérieure, six research bodies, ten engineering and business grandes écoles, the international innovation cluster System@tic Paris Region, two PRES (research and higher education hubs) and the ‘Digiteo-Triangle de la Physique’ Foundation) that have decided to join forces and build a joint campus on the Saclay Plateau by 2015.
But Saclay is more than just a stronghold of researchers and students. There are also 4,000 businesses throughout its 13 commercial zones and three business incubators as well as within the innovation clusters System@tic, Mov’eo and Medicen. Some of the large groups that have already set up businesses there include Danone Vitapole, Motorola, Thales, Honeywell, GE Healthcare and Freescale. And there will soon be a new Intel R&D center and the European headquarters for Japanese company Horiba, a world leader in optical measuring and analysis.
The Saclay Plateau is consequently a genuine place of exchange, a coveted setup for knowledge and technology transfers – a ‘French Silicon Valley’ you might say.
It has also been granted €1 billion from the French ‘National Loan’ bond issue and €860 million from ‘Plan Campus’, allowing it to boost synergies and share out its facilities. Last but not least, it is also a strategic component of Greater Paris, a project that includes plans to link this center of excellence to the capital with a high-capacity automated Metro line.
Which companies then are ready to follow in the footsteps of Kraft, Horiba or Intel and be the next to invest in Saclay?
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