The mission to Singapore was the second mission that took place within the project EU KETs4Dual-Use 2.0, bringing five companies to Singapore to meet potential collaboration partners. Unfortunately, two companies had to cancel last-minute, and their pre-arranged meetings were transformed into online meetings.

The mission to Singapore took place from March 20th – 24th 2023 and was prepared by the KETs4Dual-Use 2.0 consortium together with the contracted mission advisor and consultant Jumpster. As the objective with the business missions are to connect European dual-use companies to potential collaboration partners in the targeted countries, Jumpster had organised individual B2B meetings plans for each of the participating companies with up to 9 meetings per company. On top of the planned meeting, some companies had follow-up meetings with stakeholders they had already met earlier in the week. This is a very good example of both the openness to new (European) solutions and the serious attitude within the defence and security stakeholders in Singapore. This is very representative of the business opportunities present in Singapore for European SMEs.

Overall, the mission was divided into two stages. The first three days was packed with B2B meetings. The last two days, the consortium and the companies attended the “Singapore Defence Technology Summit” (Tech Summit), one of the main conferences in Asia dealing with Defense and Security gathering more than 1400 participant from 25 countries which this year had a special focus on digital and dual-use technologies. The conference was hosted by the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), which is a statutory board set up under the Ministry of Defence (MINDEF). DSTA implements defence technology plans, acquires defence material and develops defence infrastructure for MINDEF. The conference gathered high-level representatives on a government and CEO level, and the breaks offered good opportunities to connect with relevant stakeholders for the companies and the clusters.

In addition to the individual B2B meetings for the companies, Jumpster also organised a program for the clusters and on some occasions some of the companies also attended these meetings. After the mission, the consortium sent out a survey in order to evaluate the mission to the attending companies, thus gathering their feedback on the quality of the meetings and monitoring the number of their potential business agreements. Their overall feedback is very positive and all the partners expect to have some further positive feedback when we evaluate again in six months.

From the project consortium’s side, some interesting meetings were held with the national stakeholders and organisations. All agreed on a clear statement on an important interest in sourcing and collaborating with companies when they have the requested technology that can solve some of the challenges Singapore is facing e.g. regarding cyber security issues and counter-drone technologies to name some of the technologies mentioned during the meetings. This being said, there are some overall requirements that needs to be set in place in order to do business in Singapore (have a local presence (office) and 30 % ownership by a local stakeholders) but when this is in place, there seems to be a lot of opportunity to do business.