The redesign of the new showroom was running at full speed over the last few days, as we had important guests invited. There was a lot of hard graft and getting stuck in, so that the IHK presentation on the location analysis for the Lower Rhine, with a total of 88 invited business owners from the region, could take place on BlaueErdbeere’s premises.
The presentation of the IHK results was about assessing the economic structure and the quality of the location in Krefeld. It was determined how value creation and the employment situation have developed. The location analysis was prepared by Hochschule Niederrhein.
At the core, criticism was aimed above all at the cityscape and at safety in the city centres. The summing-up by IHK president Elmar te Neues sounds dramatic: “We are watching a city die.” The man from Krefeld urgently appeals to the invited guests to actively do something to change these failings. Jürgen Steinmetz, chief executive of the IHK, pointed to politics dealing with this problem too casually. Important meetings on strengthening the city centres were cancelled, so many business owners simply feel left in the lurch by politics.
After the presentation of the location analysis there was a heated panel discussion, in which it quickly became clear that it was the city council’s task to get the strengthening package under way. The invited lord mayor Frank Meyer argued for not forgetting the city’s strengths either and for building on them together.
“Since it was founded in 2015, BlaueErdbeere has been regarded as the little blue power berry on the Lower Rhine. Having started as a small start-up, we have managed, over the course of the last 7 years, despite the pandemic and the poor economic developments, to keep expanding the company, to hire staff and to increase turnover. Even in the currently turbulent times, we have stuck to expanding our apprenticeship programme further. Sure, the conditions in Krefeld are not easy. Value creation in Krefeld was markedly weaker compared with other cities. But it does not help much if we only criticise. A constructive way of dealing with the challenges has to be found, in order to actively change the Krefeld region for the better, together. For us it is very valuable to maintain a direct exchange with the region’s business owners and to network; all the nicer that this year’s event was allowed to take place at our place”, emphasises Julien Lorch, managing director of BlaueErdbeere.
Photos: IHK Mittlerer Niederrhein
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