The city of Mönchengladbach is an independent economic center located 25 kilometers west of Düsseldorf, the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia. With its 275,000 inhabitants, it is the largest city on the left bank of the Lower Rhine. The special feature of the city lies in its bipolarity with the two centers Mönchengladbach and Rheydt, the former functioning as the main center and the latter being of more regional importance.

With 15 million consumers within a radius of 100 km, the city is strategically located – it acts as a hub between the Benelux region with its large ports on the one hand and the Rhine-Ruhr area with its major inland ports on the other. One of the most important location factors is also the infrastructural backbone: four federal highways, two main train stations, its own business airport and the nearby airports of Düsseldorf and Cologne connect the city to the world.

Mönchengladbach has a long tradition of textile and textile machinery manufacturing. Even today, the textile and clothing industry is omnipresent in the Vitus City. However, as a result of successful structural change, the city has long since succeeded in establishing a balanced mix of industries that is fit for the future. For example, Mönchengladbach is an important hub for logistics companies from A for Amazon to Z for Zalando. In addition, with the headquarters of global players such as SMS group and Scheidt & Bachmann, the city has international significance as a competence center for mechanical and plant engineering. The healthcare industry, information and communications technology, and the food industry also enjoy a good reputation. In the coming years and decades, the structural change activities of the Rhenish Mining District will enable Mönchengladbach to focus even more on knowledge-based, sustainable economic structures – in the areas of textile technology, cyber security and aviation, among others. Because where Europe’s largest lignite mining area still lies today, Europe’s largest landscape construction site will be created in the coming decades – which in turn will lead to Europe’s largest pilot region for sustainable, low-emission and future-proof economic activity and thus also represent Europe’s largest climate protection measure. As the largest city directly bordering the coalfield, Mönchengladbach enjoys outstanding prospects for playing a decisive role in shaping this transformation and profiting from it.

However, Mönchengladbach as a business location already offers companies favorable conditions: a diverse range of mixed-use, commercial and industrial sites that can be parceled out according to individual requirements. The development of the Regiopark and Nordpark industrial parks, both of which have a supraregional impact, are successful examples.