During the breakfast meeting, we were able to get to know more about Rail Test Nordic (RTN) and their test facility for various forms of railway equipment. Lennart Wallberg explained that the plant that RTN are building will be used as a test bed, not only for trains and other types of vehicles, but also to test different types of infrastructure, signalling and switching systems and various types of electric power technologies.

- Interest in the facility is high and RTN has already signed letters of intent with the manufacturer for the next 25 years, says Lennart Wallberg. The facility will also create valuable jobs in rural areas where the test track will be between Jörn and Arvidsjaur.

Gunnar Granberg presented the company SpaceTime and their interaction based travel platform.

- Most people choose the right way if it is easy to choose the right way, explains Gunnar. That is why SpaceTime’s travel planner with integrated booking system, which both saves costs and reduces environmental impact, has such great potential. From 2017, the system will also support the purchase of public transport tickets in addition to the booking of the company’s/organisation’s own cars, bikes, external car sharing, and rental cars, which are already included in the system.

As an extra bonus point, Owen Laws got the chance to present their start-up company MOVEBYBiKE in Umeå, offering environmentally friendly, cheap and city-smart transport by cargo bike. Visitors could also view the bike parked outside the Hotel Mimers entrance.

Elin Söderberg told about the County Administrative Board’s Energy efficiency network and Klimatklivet, whom are looking for small and medium sized entrepreneurs with an energy consumption of over 1GW/year. Klimatklivet is investment support, which everyone except individuals (i.e. trust, housing associations, municipalities, businesses, community associations, etc.) can apply for investments that lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. For more information on the energy efficiency network or Klimatklivet, contact Elin.

The participants also got to listen to Anders Blomberg from Uminova Innovation, who discussed the breakfast’s organisers, the project Cleaner Growth – Northern Sweden’s major industry initiative for cleaner growth, and the Swedish-Finnish sister project Cleantech Kvarken. The investment that has a number of major players, working to create development tools and collaborations platforms between businesses and public places in order to push forward the Cleantech sector, as well as to working with the commercialisation of innovations from start-ups and spin-offs in the Cleantech sector.