Lord Livingston’s Central European Diary – Day 3

The Lord is really setting a hot pace on this 5 day CEE sprint. A GREAT Reception, GREAT Dinner, GREAT Photoshoot in Krakow’s main square and following a few hours’ sleep the Megamission is up at the crack of dawn and onto the Czech Republic. Destination Brno.

Following a quick breakfast the Minister is off to Ostrava to talk engineering and nuclear power in Ostrava to visit Vitkovice Machinery Group. These days, a quick journey by motorway – GREAT to see that the region is increasingly linked up by fast roads, a change from the past. On the way down to the Czech border we speed past a Polski Bus – Scottish company – 3 years old – 15 000 passengers a day with plans to triple in size over the next 3 years. Polski Bus making road travel easy round Central Europe

At Vítkovice the Minister takes the opportunity for a quick tour – Vítkovice is the leading Czech engineering company producing components for the energy sector, including nuclear. The company will be one of the tier 1 suppliers for the Temelin 3 and 4 projects. This visit is an opportunity to encourage them to expand their business in the UK and also to create a route to market for British nuclear supply chain opportunities .

I caught up with Lord as he was putting on his white crash hat for a tour of the facility – “We are prioritising support for British energy companies for two reasons. First, significant investments will be made into the energy sector across CEE in the next few years, and this will present major opportunities for British energy companies. Second, British energy companies are world leaders. Expertise of this kind is already in high demand across CEE.”

Energy is the biggest opportunity in the region and nuclear energy is the biggest single opportunity – we’re talking a nearly 70 billion total project opportunity. The experts know the exact size of the opportunity for the UK but it’s pretty mega.

An hour’s sprint to Brno and lunch with the new Czech Finance Minister and Deputy Trade and Industry Minister. This was a superb opportunity to continue our working relationship and to maintain dialogue on better regulation, services and industrial policy, including 2030 Framework. An opportunity also to extend an invitation for mid to large Czech Corporates to expand their business in the UK.

Following lunch a media pit stop and Lord Livingston was actively promoting the UK as a GREAT place to do business and enthusing about the scope of the Czech opportunity for UK companies. There are GREAT opportunities in the Czech Republic and we need to promote them. We are doing ok but we could be doing much better.

On to CEITEC, now this was a really important visit – following on from the Innovation Exchange the Central European Institute of Technology is a 2 billion science and innovation hub. Opportunity to promote GREAT British Technology; opportunity to build Czech British partnerships in health and life science. Health is a big strategic opportunity right across the region. Lord Livingston took careful note of this opportunity. The UK is the 2nd largest global destination for research in the health sector and there are GREAT opportunities to build technology based partnerships.

Not a moment to spare and off to the British Chamber of Commerce to business opportunity for British Business and the expansion of the British Business Centre network. A catalyst to double exports and support a massive increase of UK companies doing business in this exciting country.

From Chamber to Planetarium and a visit to the Digitarium. Time for discussion with the British companies on the tour. A GREAT day’s business in a GREAT region in a GREAT country – the Czech Republic.