We've built the scale, now it's time for optimization and efficiency - the goal of 70th FTO has been achieved!

The project of reconstruction of Polish economic diplomacy turned out to be a major operational and recruitment challenge - the Agency conducted hundreds of interviews in search of the so-called “business generalists” who will manage running offices and serving companies in selected markets. Despite achieving the quantitative goal and scale effect, recruitment at PAIH remains open all the time. Locally operating teams will be expanded, and we also will recruit country managers and consultants to the Agency's headquarters in Warsaw. - We have invested over 100 million PLN in this project. Now we are moving to the second, managerial phase when we need to lean on management systems. While we have got through the time-consuming legalization and recruitment procedures, the subsequent years 2019-2020 will be devoted to a thorough analysis of the effectiveness of the new system, measuring the effectiveness with the use of a dedicated tool and increasing the dynamism of the offices activity. We will now focus all our attention on the entrepreneur. Our goal is also to attract high-margin investments to Poland, which will create quality jobs - describes the plans of the Agency for the upcoming months Wojciech Fedko.

                                                              

In the past year, apart from the legal and organizational constitution of the FTO locations included in the plans, PAIH experts constantly navigated Polish businesses in their markets. We served over 10,000 inquires, conducted 350 trade missions and B2B sessions for Polish companies with the participation of over 1800 companies. The most inquiries we received from the companies concerned markets in Europe - over 3,000, North and South America - over 2,000, and third place from Asia and Australia - over one thousand queries. -These are our tangible successes. PAIH has found for over 5,000 Polish companies trading partners abroad. About 1800 cases handled by ZBH (18%) resulted in the specific contracts. We have built a base of over 30,000 partner organizations around the world - adds Fedko.

The effect of the activities is, among others the support from FTO in Toronto in obtaining contracts in Canada by several construction industry companies that benefited from the construction boom in this country (housing development programs) - Paradyż (ceramic tiles), Dako (window manufacturer), Blachotrapez (roofing), Porta (door) and Seedia (innovative solar benches) or in establishing the representation by the start-up Bohr Technologies (producer of quantum technologies). Thanks to FTO's support and market recognition, Glov (innovative make-up removal gloves) conquers Latin American countries. On the other hand, Unimot Polska (liquid and gaseous fuels) opened its first representative office in Ukraine, and Lekam, a pharmaceutical company, has entered the distant market of Myanmar. The Nestmedic company (manufacturer of devices for remote fetal testing) or Funtronic (interactive carpets used in education and rehabilitation) are conquering the American market, and FTO in Helsinki helps in opening the first LPP network store in Finland. These are just few selected successes of PAIH offices.

An event directly related to the development of the network of Foreign Trade Offices was the October PAIH EXPO, which met with the enormous interest overgrowing initial expectations. We have collected over 5.5 thousands participants, who represented business in 80% percent. For entrepreneurs taking part in the workshops, the main direction of the intended expansion is still Western Europe (50%), Central Europe (29%) and Eastern Europe together with Central Asia (26%). A popular direction of Polish entrepreneurs is also the USA and Canada (20%). Substantial workshops with a record turnout of over 200 participants, concerned the United Arab Emirates, China, Kazakhstan and Russia. -The interest of PAIH EXPO only confirms that we have correctly identified the needs of Polish business, especially the SME sector and the mission to fill the gap in its education in the field of system tools for supporting foreign expansion will be continued by the Agency. We can officially confirm that for October 2019 we are planning the next, this time a minimum two-day PAIH EXPO Forum, to which we are already inviting - says Wojciech Fedko.