One year after announcing its acquisition of B&R (Bernecker + Rainer Industrie-Elektronik GmbH)(www.br-automation.com), ABB (www.abb.com) is to invest 100 million euros to build a ‘state of the art’ innovation and training campus at the home of B&R in Eggelsberg.

This will be the largest ‘organic investment’ in industrial automation in ABB’s more than 130-year history, laying the foundation for around 1,000 new high-tech jobs in Austria.

The new innovation and training campus will develop technologies for the factory of the future based on ABB Ability, in which production will be undertaken autonomously by ‘smart’ and cloud-connected machines and robots.

With this investment, ABB is “delivering on its Next Level strategy, which defines innovation as a key driver of profitable growth”.

ABB invests $1.4 billion in R&D annually and has a team of around 30,000 R&D and application engineers; B&R has more than 1,000 employees working in R&D and application development.

The new R&D campus will cover 35,000m² and will house a significant number of ‘state of the art’ facilities.

Alongside ultra-modern R&D laboratories, which will develop and test new automation technologies — from industrial control systems up to machine learning and artificial intelligence — there will be an Automation Academy to train and educate customers, partners and employees in these technologies.

The ground-breaking ceremony is planned for this summer, and the new campus is expected to be up and running in 2020. Once complete, the Eggelsberg site will be one of ABB’s largest R&D centres.