Start of construction for new 'ETAS Home' in Bochum

With a ceremonial groundbreaking, ETAS GmbH has officially started construction work on its new Home development center in Bochum’s MARK 51°7 innovation district. On the site of a former Opel factory, a five-story building with over 10,000 square meters of office and usable space will be built for ETAS by the end of 2022.

The ETAS Home will be located in the city’s new innovation district, in the immediate vicinity of the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the new Max Planck Institute for Cybersecurity and Privacy. “Being here means we will have our finger on the pulse of science,” says Christoph Hartung, chairman of the ETAS board of management. “This offers us the chance to further intensify our already very good collaboration with the local academic community and to turn the latest research results into market-ready technology.” The Ruhr region, with its high number of graduates in technical courses, also provides ETAS with an ideal starting position in the competition for qualified talent to help the company achieve its targeted growth.

The construction of this new development center also stresses the importance of Bochum as a top location in the field of IT security. “ETAS was born in Bochum. For this very reason, I’m delighted that the company will continue to grow here,” said Thomas Eiskirch, the mayor of Bochum, at the groundbreaking ceremony in the innovation district. “But I particularly welcome the fact that Bosch/ETAS GmbH has decided to build a new building on MARK 51°7. Nowhere else is Bochum’s transformation into a city of knowledge more tangible – making it the ideal location for a modern IT security company,” Eiskirch continued.

The new ETAS Home is being built in line with certified sustainability criteria and will in the future offer a working environment designed in accordance with the latest ergonomic findings. In addition to the 140 ETAS associates already in Bochum, the ETAS Home will house a training center for Bosch heating technology engineers and it will be home to the German location of the software provider SonarSource. With bored pile foundations already in place, work will now begin on shell construction. The building is scheduled to be ready for occupation at the end of 2022.

Groundbreaking ceremony for the ETAS Home in Bochum - from left: Thomas Wollinger, General Manager of ETAS; Thomas Eiskirch, Mayor of Bochum; Ralf Meyer, Managing Director of Bochum Economic Development, and Christoph Hartung, Chairman of the Board of Management of ETAS GmbH.