The next frontier: Three South Tyrolean businesses driving new ideas
South Tyrol’s culture of precision and quality is shaping an era of innovation. Across the region, businesses are developing new technologies in fields such as 3D scanning, smart lighting and timber analysis.
South Tyrol’s culture of precision and quality is shaping an era of innovation. Across the region, businesses are developing new technologies in fields such as 3D scanning, smart lighting and timber analysis. This is a collaborative place: researchers, developers and manufacturers work together to transform a history of craftsmanship into new ideas. Combined with an enviable quality of life, it has created a fertile ecosystem for ambitious companies thinking big.
Allsides
A year ago, Brixen-based company Allsides had just 13 employees; today that figure has jumped to more than 50. Co-founder and CTO Burkhard Güssefeld stands on an open-plan floor, looking towards a series of futuristic machines that combine multiple lights and cameras. “We are expanding rather quickly,” he says. The company inaugurated a New York office in May, with plans to open a third in Munich soon. Yet Brixen remains its home – proof that South Tyrol offers the right environment for businesses to grow internationally.
Allsides’ machines provide high-quality, “reality-grade” 3D scanning. The king of its contraptions is The Sphere, which features 29 cameras, 56 lights and nine projectors that use patterns to determine shapes. AI and computer vision also play a part in the process. To date, Allsides has primarily focused on the footwear industry, where scans can help with advertising, e-commerce, and virtual product design for global clients such as Nike and Adidas. More recently, the company has seen success in physical AI and robotics, working with tech giants such as Meta, Amazon and NVIDIA. Eighteen different nationalities currently work at the Allsides HQ, from Danish to Nepalese. “People often assume that to build a global AI company you must be headquartered in Silicon Valley,” says CEO and co-founder Franz Tschimben. “We see things differently. South Tyrol gives us something increasingly rare: an exceptional quality of life that helps attract and retain people for the long term.”
ewo
“How can lighting be responsive and adaptive?” says Hannes Wohlgemuth, CEO of Kurtatsch-based outdoor lighting brand ewo. “How can we control lighting to shape the spaces we are moving in?” It is this curiosity that propelled ewo to a prime global market position. Its outdoor lighting projects can be found everywhere from architecture and parks to urban areas, sports fields and airports, spanning Europe, North America, Australia and the UAE.
ewo was founded in 1996 but its origins stretch much further. Hannes’s father trained as a blacksmith and worked largely with bronze. Building upon the region’s manufacturing tradition, he and his wife evolved the practice to focus on high-tech illumination. Its current base of 21 years was itself a strategic choice: a powder-coating plant was opening next door, which could link directly into ewo’s production. “We wanted to take advantage of the synergies,” says Wohlgemuth.
Working to order, each project is specifically tailored to a client’s requirements. Often collaborating with architects and lighting designers, ewo pioneered LED technology for outdoor applications long before it became universally adopted. From sleek wall- or pole-mounted luminaries to large-area floodlights, each solution is the result of intensive R&D and optical engineers based in Munich. “Our USP is the lighting technology,” says Wohlgemuth. “It’s how we master the light distribution.” With such bright ideas, ewo looks set to keep growing around the globe.
Microtec
Established in 1980, Microtec specialises in wood-tech, using advanced scanning technology and AI to help the timber industry maximise efficiency. Its work brings together two forms of expertise that sit comfortably side by side in South Tyrol: sophisticated engineering and a deep understanding of timber. The brand’s impressive headquarters in Brixen was renovated and extended in 2020. Additions include a honeycomb-like shell that references Microtec’s mathematical algorithms.
A beautiful on-site showroom (decked out, as one would expect, in wood) demonstrates the full range of Microtec’s offering. Its machines are often installed at sawmills or secondary processing sites. X-ray and CT scanning technology peers inside logs, identifying cracks, knots and other characteristics before any cutting takes place. This helps clients maximise the value of raw timber material while also reducing waste.
Microtec’s software draws on nearly 40 years of machine learning to continually refine its expertise, recognising patterns and improving accuracy over time. The company’s systems also test everything from moisture to elasticity, providing the details required to certify strength graded timber for construction purposes under strict guidelines.
Technical precision is matched by considered design: Microtec’s Goldeneye and Logeye scanners have won both Germany’s Red Dot and Italy’s Compasso d’Oro awards. All in all, these innovations are helping take the work out of woodwork.
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