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Friday, 29.03.2024, 16:05
Individual foreign fair support to be added to Enterprise Estonia's joint national stands
National
support for companies participating in foreign fairs is common practice in
the Nordic and Baltic countries, but in Estonia, the state has so far
only supported participating in a joint stand, head of Enterprise Estonia's
trade development agency Tanel Rebane said in a press release.
"Participation in joint fairs has been very beneficial for Estonian
entrepreneurs in entering new markets, but the new support will give them
greater freedom to participate in fairs where the state has not put up a joint
stand."
Q-haus CEO
Reino Soots, who has taken his company to foreign fairs both alone as well as part
of Estonia's joint stand, supports the new measure. "Q-haus has previous
experience in participating with a joint stand and we were satisfied with the
result of it, but in order to compare experience we decided to participate with
our own stand at the Norwegian construction fair Bygg Reis Deg in 2017. Even
though participating in a fair alone is several times more expensive, it offers
significantly greater freedom in organizing the stand. If we so wish, we can
now also participate in the kind of fairs where Estonia does not have a joint
stand out," Soots said.
The support
for participating in foreign fairs is aimed at the globalization and increase
in the export growth of small and medium sized industrial enterprises.
"One of the greatest problems of the Estonian economy is that too few
Estonian companies export to too few markets and participating in speciality
fairs is one way of solving this problem. For example, Balsnack as part of
Enterprise Estonia's joint stand participated in the fair Gulfood 2018 in
February and as a result of that has sold its products to Malaysia, Iraq,
Egypt, Taiwan and China and has a lot of orders still on the waiting
list," Rebane said when commenting on the impact of participating in
the fairs.
The support
is granted for participating in a fair as an exhibitor and for the transport of
product samples. The total budget of the support measure is two million euros,
while one project can apply for 3,000 to 50,000 euros. The project can be
realized within up to two years and it is allowed during that time to
participate in more than one fair. Companies will have the opportunity to
jointly apply for the support in order to participate in fairs as partners.