Fraunhofer Research Institution for Battery Cell Production FFB Münster; first entirely European manufacturing technology for battery cells.
The Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s 2025 Annual Report
The 2025 financial year was one of opportunities, progress and successful collaboration for the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. In a dynamic environment and despite a difficult economic climate, we were once again able to demonstrate our strength as one of the leading applied research organizations and to drive significant advances in the areas of innovation and sustainable development. Together with our partners in industry, government and society, we helped bring pioneering technologies closer to real-world deployment and develop tangible solutions to the major challenges of our time.
Let me provide some examples: In December 2025, the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Battery Cell Production FFB in Münster became the first organization to demonstrate that electrically functional lithium-ion battery cells can be produced using entirely European manufacturing technology. This is a milestone on the road to competitive battery production. At the Fraunhofer Heilbronn Research and Innovation Centers HNFIZ, eight Fraunhofer institutes are pooling their expertise in the fields of AI and digital transformation. Supported by the Dieter Schwarz Foundation and working closely with companies, organizations and public institutions across the region, they are creating a unique scientific ecosystem focused on intensive technology transfer and commercialization. The research portfolio covers various levels of maturity and is deliberately geared toward urgent presentday challenges and the demands of industry and society. Fraunhofer’s research is driven by industry needs. That is a testament to our mission. Germany has an outstanding, highly specialized research landscape, engineering expertise, high-performing industrial companies and an innovationdriven small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) sector.
These are exactly the strengths that the German federal government’s High-Tech Agenda Germany (HTAD) is building on with the aim of advancing Germany’s innovative capacity and sovereignty in global technological competition. As a key innovation partner to industry, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft will do everything in its power to promote the implementation of the HTAD by pursuing cutting-edge applied research, establishing regional innovation partnerships and transferring research results into practical applications. The success of the HTAD will largely depend on all stakeholders across the innovation ecosystem making contributions in line with their respective strengths.
For this, Germany needs a regulatory environment that clears the path to innovation for all stakeholders in the system. The implementation of the highly anticipated Freedom of Innovation Act will be crucial in this regard. Through measures such as reforms to nonprofit law, it has the potential to create greater flexibility that will strengthen the transfer of knowledge and technology across Germany’s innovation system.
What Germany and Europe need is the courage to set priorities, confidence in their strengths and willingness to pursue structural reform. A modern culture of risk-taking and entrepreneurship must become a hallmark of Germany’s innovation system, alongside an environment that enables innovation rather than holding it back. Let us work together to make this vision a reality.
President and Chair of the Executive Board of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft