Route to France - Irish firms generate more than €1 million worth of business

04 October, 2007

This two-day trade mission was to give the 5 Irish companies involved a stepping stone into the French market and explore the business opportunities available to them. Meetings had been arranged with top firms like France Telecom Orange, Schneider Electric, CISCO, HP, IBM, SAP, Philips and several other leading French companies in the IT and telecoms market.

"The purpose of the mission is to provide target introductions with downstream back-up support and advice to enable these Cork based companies to accelerate and grow internationally", said Michael O'Connor, CORKBIC Chief Executive.

Among the companies represented in France was EHA Soft Solutions, which develops and provides risk management software for environmental and health and safety managers. Other companies include network firm, Xerenet; software company, Deep-Insight; semiconductor company Lightstorm Networks and U4EA.

"We have selected our counterpart Business Innovation Centre (BIC) CICOM because they have operated successful incubation facilities in Sophia since 1995 and now have the deep personal and commercial networks to enable our higher potential entrepreneurs get in front of the right people", said Eileen Moloney, Senior Business Consultant at CORKBIC.

Gerry Donovan, Chairman of CORKBIC, added: "This has been a long term plan of AxisBIC to work proactively to grow our companies through venturing with our European network of 160 BICs across Europe."

Similar trips will be organised again by CORKBIC which said the French mission was hugely beneficial. Michael O'Connor said: "We met with 15 firms at a very serious decision-making level and there were more than 30 meetings organised over the two days. It was a very successful trip."