"We want to be where businesses want us"

Swerim is a leading metals research institute that conducts industry-oriented research and development on metals and their path from raw material to finished product.
- "Our task is to optimize performance and be a link between universities and industry to create development with a vision of a fossil-free and circular industry," says Joakim Hedegård from Swerim.

Through increased product quality, higher resource efficiency and more sustainable manufacturing processes, Swerim wants to strengthen the competitiveness of the industry and contribute to the development of new processes, materials and product solutions. Swerim has 190 employees in Stockholm, Luleå and Lund and is now establishing itself in Trollhättan as a new partner in the Production Technology Center (PTC). Joakim has long experience in the institute and industry. He heard about PTC already during his education as a civil engineer at KTH in Mechanical and Joining Engineering.

"The partnership in PTC is very timely for us"

- We are very interested in networking and bringing together entrepreneurs with similar interests in development projects, and we want to be able to increase our industrial benefit and collaboration capacity by being on site in Trollhättan. We see Trollhättan and PTC as an interesting place to run research projects and assignments where we can jointly create resources to help companies.

- As we are recently reorganized, we are working to find new collaboration partners, which makes the partnership in PTC very timely for us. Today we have a very good collaboration with University West, Innovatum Science Park and GKN, which we would like to see more of. This makes it natural for us to be a part of PTC and we believe that the collaboration gives us the opportunity to grow and contribute even more.

See opportunities to connect more areas

Swerim is 80 percent owned by Swedish industry and 20 percent by the Swedish state via RISE (Research Institutes of Sweden). At present, mainly the parts of Swerim that work with production techniques, sensor technology and non-destructive testing will participate in the PTC, but there is the possibility of connecting other areas, such as advanced metallographic investigations and accident investigations.

- The fact that the companies are majority owners is a strength for us as it makes us more flexible. In my world, the needs of the companies are in focus, we are open to many things and want to be where the companies want us.