On three days from 17 to 19 of October 2023 Konin and Poznan welcomed 6 Greentech startups and scaleups from Estonia and Sweden within the EU Cluster exchange program. The visit organised by ARR KONIN and PPNT had a rich programme of presentations, meetings, site visits and interactive workshops. The visitors: green tech companies from Estonia and Sweden looked for essential knowledge on the Polish market and collaboration opportunities.

The visitors shared with us their success stories on the visit results. 

The Estonian Wastelocker company had brought its IOT solution for Waste Management, based on secure sensor technology measuring the waste in the bin and IOT application for waste flow reporting and analysis. The solution is intended for manufacturing and offices but has been proven to be useful for large events. The company was interested in meeting potential users or an intermediary, waste management organisation. They especially appreciated the first-day visit to MZGOK (a company dealing with the collection and disposal of municipal waste) and the talks about cooperation. WasteLocker had the chance to participate in the programme and it turned out to be very relevant and tailored to our business needs. The sectors were related to the ones that WasteLocker operates in and opened new collaboration opportunities. While it was not certain, the exchange made it possible to understand the Polish market better and gain new connections says the company founder.

Another Estonian scale-up: Waybiller offers a digital solution for bulk transport management system (bulk TMS or BTMS): creation & sharing e-waybills digitally with trading partners. The solution connects truck scales and loader scales to get weights to e-waybills directly from the scale. The company looked for first pilot customers who are ready to move from paper waybills to e-waybills (preferably quarry owners). They appreciated the information about the biomass Polish market. What surprised me most during my visit, were meetings with local companies (e.g. the power plant in Konin), which could potentially be our target customers– says the Waybiller representative.

The next company Aquila Executive from Sweden is focused on linking international actors together in a win-win situation: institutions (municipalities), companies, clubs (civil society) and looking for funding for joint projects. The founder of the Company was mostly interested in finding Polish partners for joint green&democracy projects for reconstruction in Ukraine. He sums up his impressions: the best opportunities came during day three of the visit. A Polish lawyer ran a workshop session for all the visitors and he knew not only about laws for business and trade, but he seems also to know how to run projects. I think he could be a potential partner for the future collaboration. Another good contact was the PPNT as an organization, but also a facilitator of a social network of academic and practical views of business and projects.

Estonian deep-tech company THINNECT is a supplier of IOT Edge technologies (multiple autonomous sensors AI trained sensors), for multiple applications, e.g. smart city, defence. The company owns a number of patents. They are interested in the implementation of the solutions in Poland. The representative of this company was keen on establishing contacts with Polish green companies and with the results of a joint workshop connected with the potential cooperation.

THINFACILITY offers a service, based on THINNECT technologies, for an energy management system devoted to usage optimisation in buildings. The company looked for real estate owners and developers interested in energy savings. The representatives of the THINFACILITY was happy to hear about the plans for refurbishing a large area in the city centre by a Poznan city company MTP Group. He appreciates also establishing contacts with the institutions visited in Konin and mapping their requirements.

Achify is an IT startup established in Estonia. The company focuses on high-load logistics, fintech, dashboard development, real-time system monitoring, and chat-ai-bot development. They were interested in collaboration for the development of a new transport service with drones as a delivery method. The Polish drone market looks very attractive for investment. The last day of the visit was very productive, especially communication with the lawyer and drone company: tenant of PPNT about regulations allowing the use of drones for cargo transport – says the Achify owner.

The exchange was organised as part of the GreenTech 2.0 project financed by the EU COSME 2020 program.

The content of this document represents the views of the author only and is his/her sole responsibility; it cannot be considered to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) or any other body of the European Union. The European Commission and the Agency do not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.