A little bit about our company history…

Having worked extensively in other areas of technical assistance and programme & project development, founder Angela Schultz-Zehden turned her attention more specifically to the Baltic Sea Region in the early 2000s. Beginning with the Baltic21 Lighthouse project development, Angela founded s.Pro in 2005. Joined by Carsten Beyer for the development of the seminal PlanCoast Handbook, s.Pro became a registered private limited liability company in 2008: s.Pro – sustainable projects GmbH was born.

One of the most significant early projects was BaltSea Plan, developed and managed by s.Pro on behalf of the German Hydrographic Agency (BSH) from 2009-2012. This was one of the first major EU initiatives in the field of maritime spatial planning, with 14 partners from seven Baltic countries, the project provided key input into the realisation of the EU Maritime Policy, HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan and the VASAB Gdańsk Declaration. With three further Interreg projects running in this programming period, s.Pro was consolidating and expanding its base of expertise and contacts.

Another milestone was the SUBMARINER project (Sustainable Use of Baltic Marine Resources), managed on behalf of the Maritime Institute Gdansk in 2010-2013. The key project publications – the SUBMARINER Compendium and the SUBMARINER Roadmap – have proved to be enduringly useful reference works and the Roadmap has seen several editions as well as a Status Report (2016). However, the main result of the project was the establishment of the SUBMARINER Network for Blue Growth EEIG in 2014, with s.Pro as one of the seven founding members. This international network continues to be a cornerstone of s.Pro’s work.

With an ever-expanding team of consultants and external project experts, s.Pro was able to take on more and more initiatives within the following programming periods. In January 2017, we moved to our current premises in Berlin Schöneberg, where we are currently working on a broad range of projects, platforms and publications.