CENTRES OF EXCELLENCE

You may not have heard it, but there was an explosion around Nantes during the last decade. The region erupted in new sectors like materials, life sciences and biotech. It’s now a center of excellence for these hot new industries, and the result has been a veritable shower of avant-garde projects producing huge economic fallout.

These industries, in permanent flux, are bringing forth ever-flowering commercial outlets for research. Here are just three of Nantes’ new, internationally known centres of excellence;

Biotechnology
Atlantic Biotherapies is a group of 40 young biotech and pharmaceutical firms anchored around the university, laboratory and hospital infrastructure with the neighbour city of Angers. It fuses academic research with startup enterprises, generating a mix that means value for business, especially in pharmaceuticals, bioproduction, immunology, cellular and genetic therapy. Two thousand hospital staff and researchers, plus another 650 industrial employees represent the lion’s
share of the regional workforce in the biotherapy sector. Its €30-million budget has already financed over a dozen projects. ARRONAX, a high energy cyclotron for cancer research will be commissioned at the end of 2008. This represents 33 million Euros of investment from local councils in western France, the French government and the European Union. When completed, the project will be run by a public-private partnership.

Composites materials
In the realm of materials, two dozen universities, 64 professional schools and 35 laboratories have linked with 300 firms - including Airbus, Aker Yards, DCN Propulsion and shipbuilder Beneteau - to form the €220-million EMC2 group. Ten thousand workers are channeling their expertise into large-scale materials programs for aeronautics, shipbuilding, and naval and automotive propulsion. The project has already established a new research centre in Nantes for Europe’s aeronautics and space giant, EADS.

Telecommunications
Images & Reseaux is a telecommunications undertaking within the Brittany region and nearby cities of Rennes and Laval. France Telecom, Thomson, Alcatel, Thales and French TV network TF1 have marshalled 100,000 employees - half in top management posts - alongside 1,700 researchers, and 16 schools and universities to focus on the digital revolution and new technologies. Groundbreaking advances in HDTV, video on demand and third generation mobile video networks are being born, thanks to this €300-million scheme.
Other high-competency poles have been established in high-tech agriculture, particularly around resistance to bacteria ; environment-friendly construction and luxury automobile manufacturing.