As part of the EU KETs4Dual-Use 2.0 project, the first business mission will take place during 20-24 February 2023 to the UAE. A total of 10 European small- and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) with dual-use technologies and services, will participate in the tailormade visit focused on developing sustainable long-term partnerships for companies who are ready to internationalize.

The SMEs are selected based on various criteria, and in addition to this, the dedicated local mission advisor connected to the project has given inputs regarding each of the companies based on their technologies and the demand for it in the security and defence sector in the UAE.

As part of the preparations prior to the visit, each of the selected companies have had two scheduled individual meetings with the mission advisors, in order for the mission advisors to get a better understanding of the companies, their technology and expectations for which organizations they wish to meet. Based on this conversation, the mission advisors identify relevant stakeholders for the companies and develop individual B2B meeting plans during the days in the UAE.

In addition to the individual meeting plans, all the companies will attend the IDEX exhibition taking place in Abu Dhabi. The project consortium has chosen to plan the business mission in connection with the IDEX exhibition in order to maximize the output of the business mission for the companies, as the IDEX exhibition is one of the most important defence exhibitions in the Middle East and an important exhibition to attend and identify further potential collaboration partners.

Lastly, in order to prepare the SMEs as good as possible, the project consortium have organized two preparatory webinars together with the mission advisor, where the SMEs are introduced more in-depth to the defence and security sector in the UAE, rules and regulations, key stakeholders, business etiquette etc.

In total, three business missions are developed during the first 6-months of 2023, and the second one will take place in Singapore during 20-24 March and the third one in Canada during 29 May-2 June.

The consortium consists of five partners: the French clusters (poles de compétitivité) OPTITEC as the coordinator, Minalogic and SAFE Cluster together with the defense and security cluster Center for Defence, Space & Security (CenSec) (Denmark) and Estonian Defence Industry Association (EDIA).

The EU KETs4DUAL-USE 2.0, a 24-month project, is funded under the COSME Go International call in the defence and security sector, with the objective of intensifying collaboration across borders between defence and security and high-tech industrial clusters, in order to develop and implement joint internationalisation strategies in the area of dual use technologies, products and services towards non-EU countries.