Goals

Gesellschaft für Wirtschaftsförderung Duisburg mbH (Business Promotion Agency, Duisburg), called GFW Duisburg for short, looks after the economic interests of the City of Duisburg. It is an independent limited liability company (GmbH), organised as a public private partnership. Half of the shares are held by the City of Duisburg, the other half by various entrepreneurs.

The tasks of the business promotion agency can be divided into two areas: firstly GFW Duisburg takes care to ensure that new companies, project developers and investors discover Duisburg as a business location for themselves, set up in business and get involved in Duisburg. The business promotion agency helps, at the same time, by means of its widely ramified network and its good contacts, to turn visions into reality. The tasks of location marketing and acquisition are, for example, at the heart of appearances at international real estate trade fairs such as MIPIM in Cannes or EXPO REAL in Munich.

Secondly, GFW Duisburg looks after the business people already resident within the area of the city: it sees itself as a partner for small and medium-sized companies, provides extensive services, so that the business people feel good at the location and can develop and grow in Duisburg. The range of services provided includes help in finding industrial and office real estate as well as areas of land for use for business purposes, advice on promotion schemes, establishing networks, holding functions such as business sector-oriented get-togethers or information talks.

GFW Duisburg was founded in 1988. At that time, the Ruhr was in the throes of the steel crisis, the city's economic structure was orientated in a one-sided way to the iron and steel industry, the loss of several thousand jobs was imminent. A bottleneck as regards areas of land impeded new locations and the expansion of existing businesses. Seen against this background, in Duisburg the business promotion agency was founded as a public private partnership, since only with the joint action of all those involved in economic life can the economic structure be sustainably enhanced and lastingly stabilised.