Materials and production technologies Over the past decades, the focus of Luxembourg’s manufacturing industry has shifted from traditional materials to high added value niche products and highly customised production technologies. In order to support the sector’s efforts to stay on the cutting edge, the Luxembourg Materials & Production Technologies Cluster stimulates activities in fields such as composite materials, high performance computing and additive manufacturing. We contributed to developing the concept and financial model for the National Composites Centre – Luxembourg (NCCL-L), which has now been established in collaboration with 10 private companies and with a budget of €100 million over 5 years. The NCC-L focuses on industry-oriented R&D and innovation projects jointly driven by two or more companies and aims to increase the competitiveness of the sector while Luxembourg is positioning itself as an international centre of excellence in composites technology. The cluster helped defining the centre’s needs for equipment and identified 39 R&D and innovation projects of common interest. We also facilitated the drafting of Memorandum of Understanding between the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), the Ministry of the Economy and Luxinnovation that outlines the NCC-L’s interaction with industry and Luxinnovation. In addition, we provided support to the definition and presentation of the “Important Project of Common European Interest on High Performance Computing and Big Data Enabled Applications” (IPCEI HPC BDA) launched by Luxembourg in collaboration with France, Spain and Italy. Luxembourg is taking a leading role in this Europe-wide initiative aiming to build the world’s most powerful HPC infrastructure and to develop Big Data-enabled solutions for industry and research. We participated in high-level group meetings with representatives of the four countries and contributed to the drafting of a scoping paper describing the technology, infrastructure and 10 thematic test beds to be implemented. The formal approval of the project by the European Commission is expected in 2017. The cluster conducted a study regarding the possibility of setting up a national additive manufacturing centre in Luxembourg. This included an in-depth analysis of the current needs and capabilities of both companies and public research as well as an international benchmark study. Thirty-one companies have confirmed their interest in such a centre. We also secured the support of the ministries concerned. Opening doors for our cluster members and defending their interests at the European level is a priority for us. Luxinnovation and the Ministry of the Economy joined MANUNET, a European project aiming to foster the competitiveness of Europe’s manufacturing industry, in 2016. This opened the door for Luxembourg SMEs to apply for cofounding of manufacturing R&D projects performed by enterprises and their partners from at least two different countries.