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NordGen’s Head Office will Re-locate to New Building

Date: 2020.09.28

Today is day worth celebrating as we now can announce that NordGen will re-locate its head office to an entirely new building! The new house, which will be built only a stone’s throw from our current head office in Alnarp, will lead to a major lift for NordGen’s operations. The new building should be ready for occupation in December 2021.

By providing knowledge and conserving genetic resources in the form of seeds and plants, NordGen is working for future generations. The work we do today will help farmers, researchers and plant breeders to put food on our plates tomorrow. A new house will create better conditions for our work in a time when this is more important than ever.

“Climate change already affects our agriculture and the biodiversity is decreasing at unprecedented speed. We can see that our services are more sought after now and we are also expanding. To have a new house is a great need for us, as it will lead to considerable improvement of our operations”, says NordGen’s Executive Director, Lise Lykke Steffensen.

The Nordic seed collection is one of the most important tools we have to adapt the agriculture to future challenges such as new pests and diseases, climate change and the conversion to a more sustainable agriculture. NordGen governs this collection, keeps the seeds viable by germination tests and propagation and distribute up to 10 000 seeds each year for use in research, biotechnology and plant breeding.

“For several years, NordGen’s head office has been operating in a building not optimally designed for the kind of work conducted in a genebank. With a new house our premises will be more fitting, and we will be able to fulfill our mission of conserving and promote the sustainable use of genetic resources in an even better way” says Lise Lykke Steffensen.

Nordic Design

NordGen is the genebank of the five Nordic countries and the flagship of Nordic cooperation. With that in mind, the new house will of course also follow a Nordic design – a wooden building designed with sustainability in mind, including features such as sedum roof promoting local biodiversity and solar panels for more sustainable energy production. To be able to stay here in Alnarp, in the research dense area at the campus of the Swedish Agricultural University (SLU), creates important synergy effects. To be physically close to the research within plant breeding taking place here, not least with the new investment called Grogrund, has proved important for much of the work we do. This has also been noted by the Swedish Ministry of Trade and Industry, whose support in our re-location has been very welcome.

Photo: Olof Haldar

”With their work for conserving genetic and biological diversity, NordGen complete the work and research conducted at SLU. NordGen’s continuous presence at Campus Alnarp also contributes to anchoring the area as a campus for collaboration around sustainable development at a regional, national and international level” said Magnus Huss, Market Area Manager at Akademiska Hus, the stately owned real estate company responsible for building the house and renting it to NordGen.

The full cost of the building project is 67 million SEK.