Air Liquide inaugurates its new Paris Innovation Campus, with a fully renovated R&D Center

Today, Air Liquide inaugurates its Paris Innovation Campus on the “Plateau de Saclay”. This new Campus illustrates the Group’s open innovation approach, especially on energy transition & environment, healthcare and digital transformation. It includes Air Liquide’s largest Research & Development Center, a fully renovated 15,000-square-meter facility with 48 laboratories and pilot platforms. From 2019, the Innovation Campus will also host a deep-tech start-up accelerator.

Air Liquide’s new Paris R&D Center has been fully renovated with an investment of €50 million. The facility is the Group’s largest R&D Center and brings together almost 500 people, including 350 researchers, and 48 laboratories as well as pilot platforms to design and test technologies at larger scale. The R&D Center is also a sustainable development innovation flagship, as it is a high-performance energy building allowing to test new clean energies. A fuel cell supplies part of the center’s heating, cooling and electricity needs, using hydrogen generated in situ. The building is also equipped with 300 square meters of photovoltaic panels and supplied with 100% renewable energy sources (biomethane and electricity).

On this occasion, Air Liquide announces that its Campus will host in 2019 a deep-tech start-up accelerator. Not only will Air Liquide host start-ups but will grant them access to shared experimental facilities and customized support from Air Liquide experts, with the objective to accelerate the industrialisation of their offer.

François Darchis, Senior Vice-President and member of the Air Liquide Group Executive Committee, supervising innovation, said: “Over the past five years, Air Liquide has reinvented its innovation approach, creating a global network of Innovation Campuses, in the United States (Delaware), in Asia (Shanghai, Tokyo) and in Europe (Paris, Frankfurt). Each Campus includes an R&D Center, working in close relation with Operations, and numerous partners, including universities and technology institutes, customers and start-ups. This open innovation strategy combines scientific expertise, capacity to develop technologies and digital solutions, to bring innovative offers to market more rapidly and to better serve our customers and patients.”