Although a good 80 per cent of all employees in Switzerland were working in the service sector at the end of 2018 - and the trend is rising - the SATW study focuses on the secondary industrial sector, more precisely on the manufacturing industry. Why? With 16 per cent of employees, this sector generated 25 per cent of total value added in 2018 and has the highest average per capita value added of all sectors. Industry therefore makes an important contribution to the prosperity of a nation, but also of a region.
Looking at all economic classes, Schaffhausen is a canton of SMEs with a strong secondary sector and is therefore more a reflection of Eastern Switzerland than the neighbouring canton of Zurich or the Swiss average. The focus on the manufacturing industry, i.e. the secondary sector excluding civil engineering and building construction, reveals the differences to Eastern Switzerland: in Schaffhausen, the plastics and chemical-pharmaceutical industries each account for 20 per cent of all jobs; a figure that is unrivalled for the plastics industry in Switzerland and is only exceeded for the chemical-pharmaceutical industry by the canton of Basel-Stadt. Even though both industry classes show the same negative trend in selected innovation indicators as the other classes, they are able to position themselves in the positive quadrant of the "cost-income diagram" - in stark contrast to most other industry classes.
Schaffhausen has been hit harder than average by deindustrialisation: Between 2011 and 2018, 5.5 per cent of all jobs in the secondary sector were lost - in other words, one in 20 jobs. This is a figure that is well above the Swiss average. At the same time, the shift of jobs to the service sector in Schaffhausen was not as pronounced as in the comparative regions. A breakdown of the data shows on the one hand that Schaffhausen lost an above-average number of jobs in the high-tech and low-tech industries, but was able to increase the number of employees in the chemical-pharmaceutical industry. On the other hand, the majority of job losses occurred in SMEs: consequently, deindustrialisation hit SMEs in the high-tech and low-tech industries comparatively hard.
The study formulates two comprehensive application clusters that build on the strengths of Schaffhausen's industry and the special features of the location. One cluster focuses on food and health and outlines how individualised meat substitute products "Made in Schaffhausen" can become a reality - from the field to the plate, so to speak. The second cluster pursues the vision of an ecosystem for modern plastics. Thanks to innovative solutions for surfaces, medical technology and food packaging, but also thanks to a rather playful accompanying project in the circular economy, Schaffhausen can play a pioneering role in the high-tech plastics industry.
Two smaller pilot projects focus on innovative mobility concepts and aspects of product traceability in the watchmaking and pharmaceutical industries and allow Schaffhausen to position itself as an innovative player in niche applications.
The clusters and pilot projects require cooperation between different industrial classes that are strongly represented in Schaffhausen, thrive on the collaboration of companies of all sizes and can offer newly established companies a home with a long-term vision.
Claudia Schärer, Stefan Scheidegger
Beatrice Huber, Esther Lombardini
