As part of the EU KETs4Dual-Use 2.0 project, the second business mission will take place during 20-24 March 2023 to Singapore. A total of five 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 Singapore.

As part of the preparations prior to the visit, each of the selected companies have had at least 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 would like to meet during the week. Based on this conversation, the mission advisors identify relevant stakeholders for the companies and develop individual B2B meeting plans during the days in Singapore.

In additional to individual B2B meetings, the project consortium has chosen to organize the business mission in connection with the Singapore Defence Technology Summit 2023, taking place 22-24 March. This year, the Summit has a special focus on “Digital and Dual-Use Technologies -opportunities and threats” and is hosted by the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), a statutory board under the purview of the Ministry of Defence. Participation in the Summit is meant to maximize the output of the business mission for the companies, as the Summit is a great opportunity to further identify and get into dialogue with other 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 Singapore, rules and regulations, IP rights, key stakeholders, cultural aspects and business etiquette etc.

In total, three business missions are organized during the first 6 months of 2023, the first one took place 20-24 February to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the third and last one will take place 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 Danish defence and security cluster Center for Defence, Space & Security (CenSec) 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.