 Good morning and welcome to our event on the opportunities for Irish business on the continent co-hosted by ourselves the Institute of International European Affairs and Enterprise Ireland, the state agency tasked with assisting companies boost to their exports. My name is Donald Brian and I'll be in the chair over the next 90 minutes for this, the second in a series of three Europe is our future seminars. EU markets and in particular the Eurozone represent significant diversification opportunities for Irish companies. The ability to seek out new additional opportunities and capitalise them, capitalise on them will be a major success factor for Irish companies in the years ahead. This webinar, which as I say is the second in a series of webinars with Enterprise Ireland, will explore sales and marketing strategies to engage a wider European audience and market for Irish companies. The running order for this morning's event, we'll see the minister for Europe, Thomas Berne TD, opening the event and setting the scene. He'll be followed by one of Ireland's leading economists and chairperson of the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, Professor Francis Rouhan. The main section of the morning will bring together four people who are the co-face of cross-border commerce in Europe and I'll introduce them in more detail at the start of the panel session. Before getting underway, some brief housekeeping notes. This event is entirely on the record, which applies to both the speakers and those who put questions and comments. The audience is invited to put those comments and questions via the Zoom function, Q&A Zoom function at the bottom of your screens. So please chip in using that method, make your comments, ask questions, they can be general, they can be specific for individual speakers, panellists, etc. And my colleagues ask me to let those of you know who are on social media that you can tweet using the handle at IEEA, if you are so minded. So to get our event underway, I'd like to invite the Europe minister, Thomas Berne, TD, just briefly a little bio of the minister. He was first elected to Bill Aaron to represent Mead East in 2007. From that time until 2011, he was a member of the Iraq's Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence, Social Protection and Finance and Public Service. In 2011, he was elected to the Shamp for the Cultural Educational Panel. He served as Senator over that period to 2016, during which time he was a fateful spokesperson on public expenditure and reform. 2016, he was elected again to Bill Aaron over that term from 2016 to 2020. He served as the fateful party spokesperson on education. Following the 2020 election, he was appointed Minister of State for European Affairs by Tshuk Miho Martin. Minister, you're very welcome. Thanks for joining us. We look forward to your opening remarks. Morning, Dan. Thank you for inviting me here this morning and thanks to all the panel as well for giving up their time and people who are here as well for what's a really important event, I think, and discussion as well. It's a good opportunity, I think, for me as well to outline the importance of the European Union and our own government economic strategy, because of course we know the European Union and we take for granted sometimes has been a significant positive influence on our development and will play a pivotal role in our future. And I first mentioned the government's global Ireland strategy, which is supposed to the government strategy on doubling Ireland's international footprint by 2025. So the strategy encompasses diplomacy, culture, education, education, tourism, and of course business and trade. Central to the strategy is membership of the European Union and the relationship with the European Union and with member states. It involves us working with individual member states at every level in those in those fields. We have strategies now with France and with Germany and indeed with the Nordic region as well. And that's a deepening engagement and it's not just in terms of diplomacy, but also in terms of trade and business, culture, education, etc. So we want to proactively work to build trade with European Union member states and to double Irish business exports to the Eurozone by 2025. And of course the IAEA play a key role in providing a forum like this to engage in discussion and debate and raising the profile of all things at European. Business and trade with the EU holds a central position in the global Ireland strategy. And of course this is more important in light of Brexit and of course in light of COVID. Strong trade with EU member states is crucial to successful economic growth and there are clear benefits of access to a single market and with no customs, no tariffs in the population of 440 million. That's something we're going to have to talk about a lot more, particularly as we become a net contributor to the European Union at the budget. And there are additional costs and procedural benefits using a single currency when trading. And there are no additional costs and there are procedural benefits using a currency when trading with countries in the Eurozone. Regulatory alignment of course is a growing advantage. The absence of mobile roaming charges and seek them creeping back in the UK. And that's just one example of cost being reduced by a single EU approach. And this is replicated in a growing number of sectors. And the reputation of Irish products and services is strong in Europe. Irish businesses are recognized as an innovation flexibility and friendly business type. And this week I was pleased to visit the Arnua cheese factory in Spain. A really good example of an Irish company innovating in Europe and exporting Irish products as well to do a process and so long. And then in the European Union and even that case worldwide. I know that Enterprise Ireland's Eurozone strategy is designed to help Irish enterprise take advantage of the opportunity that the Eurozone presents and positions the Eurozone as an extension of the domestic market. That's the way we have to look at it. So Enterprise Ireland now has eight offices in six Eurozone countries, Netherlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain. Two new offices in Munich and Lyon opened in 2019. And there's about 40 market advisors providing support Enterprise Ireland clients building their Eurozone business. Despite COVID, exports grew in 2020 through the Eurozone by 1.6%. So I think that still happening was even much greater growth in 2019 at 15%. So the range of opportunities for Irish business in the Eurozone is cross-sectoral. Engineering of course, life sciences, high tech construction, digital technology, and of course traditional sectors and innovation in traditional sectors such as agriculture, financial construction, and logistics. The EU's focus on an increased investment in decarbonising the economy that we've seen in the 55 strategy launched this week is also creating new opportunities for Irish companies. So my message to business today is to work with Enterprise Ireland to take advantage of the supports and to take full advantage of our European Union membership. And unfortunately, our British friends talk for granted. And I feel I didn't really feel an understanding full benefit of Enterprise Ireland, of course, is uniquely positioned to help Irish business. There's a number of points I would make though. Language. First, our advantage. Ireland is now the only native English-speaking country in the European Union. This is a huge advantage for business actually, and we don't really consider that. But we shouldn't be complacent. And it's more important than ever then to expand and improve on our language skills. European language capability will enhance our ability to build relationships with European partners. Crucially for trade, it will enhance our ability to take advantage of business opportunities in the EU. So I would encourage Irish businesses not only to take advantage of the English language that we all speak so well, but prioritize language, other language skills as an essential skill. And I know that Enterprise Ireland encourages business to speak in the language of their customers. And language is a key sales and marketing skill. Without this, you're starting your sales and marketing activity one step behind your competitors. But the right language skills can be recruited because obviously language acquisition takes a bit of time. Enterprise Ireland does provide support so they help including key manager grants and the grad start programs, which assist financial assistance where individual individuals with language skills are required. And of course, we can recruit people with language skills right from right across the European Union. Again, thanks for our membership at the European Union. Now Ireland as well has another advantage. We have a strong diaspora across the EU, which is very well integrated into society, including with language skills. And indeed many Europeans have a strong connection with Ireland. And often there's a positive experience as to be an English in Ireland, you see. So that this week in Spain as well. This is a significant resource. And there are people who are enthusiastic about providing formal and informal support to Irish business and of course a pool for potential recruits to Irish business as well. If I may, I may just mention the government's strategy to increase Irish representation in the European institutions in terms of employment. And this again is to maintain our influence in the European Union, but of course throughout the member states of the European Union as well. So in May, I launched a strategy called a career for you to significantly increase the numbers of Irish officials in permanent and temporary positions in the EU institutions to increase Irish people, the numbers of Irish people with applied jobs and improving the awareness of careers as well. That's very important. And indeed for people who have those skills that dealing with business across the European Union. And this might be another step up the career ladder as well. And that's what they want to do in terms of public service in particular. Now our diplomatic network Ireland is not unique, not everybody has. We have an embassy in every EU member state. And our embassies work collaboratively with Enterprise Ireland and other state agencies to accelerate the growth of Irish companies in those markets. So our embassies in every member state of the European Union are a big tool for Ireland's business sector to make inroads in new European markets. And I have to say our ambassadors and officials do really go beyond the call of duty and supporting business to resort to always be called upon. Of course, we have a permanent representation in Brussels to the European Union. And that plays a key role in ensuring that the voice of Irish business heard at the EU table, particularly in relation to policy regulation and the level playing field. Its main task, of course, is to ensure that the country's interests and policies that are pursued as effectively as possible in the European Union. So just to thank the IIEA on the 30th anniversary and to commend their work and providing this forum for exchange of ideas and information on European affairs. And if you aren't members, I strongly encourage you to do so and to stay abreast of political and policy development across the European Union. So thanks to Michael Collins and Dan O'Brien and Anne Lannigan from Enterprise Ireland for organising the event. And I know that the speakers who are coming to this event have a huge amount of practical experience and perhaps some of them, perhaps, would have received support or have had engagements with their official services. And just to thank the business community for joining the discussion this morning, if your hard work and your commitment, which is the foundation of our economy, governments don't direct, don't create jobs by direction or by making new laws. We're there to provide you the architecture that you can succeed in and thereby the country's succeed the economy as well. But we do firmly believe that a deeper business and trade relationship with the European Union is crucial for a future of Australia. And I would say this, and that the benefits of the European Union are that light across society, particularly in business. And it's really, really important that business maintains and business is active in promoting a positive vision and a positive experience of the European Union. Because we saw what happened in Britain with Brexit, and that can very easily be, you know, there's nothing to say that couldn't happen again. Some other members say if people start taking the advantage, just for granted, just to forget the benefits of it and if they simply allow debates to be taken over by negative voices. So I think it's really important that we speak up for ourselves at the European Union table, but understand as well that our status as a small country and the status of our businesses coming from a small country are significantly enhanced by being at that table in Brussels. And I think it's very, very important for the business community to keep at the front of that message. So look, thanks very much this morning. I look forward to your discussion and in the time ahead. Thank you. Many thanks, Minister, for joining us, for setting the scene and for your kind words about our efforts here at the Institute. Much appreciated and very much tea up the morning. Perhaps moving from more of the political over to the policy side of things. It's a pleasure to welcome to the event Frances Rouen. Frances is one of Ireland's leading economists. She is an honorary fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a research affiliate at the Economic and Social Research Institute here in Dublin. She has held academic and senior administrative posts in Trinity over the decades and she was also the director of the ESRI for a decade, so 2006-2015. Her research interests are in economic development, international economics and public policy and she's published widely in these areas, which you'll agree makes her an ideal person to give sort of overview on the matters under discussion today. So thanks, Frances, for joining us and the floor is yours. Good morning and thank you very much everybody for coming on this event today. I want to congratulate Enterprise Ireland and the IEA for providing this forum. I think there's a real need to discuss how we can increase our sales by Irish exporters into Europe and how to support this. This is not a new topic. It's been something which we've talked about since I'm sorry if not God was a child since I was a very young person because my first job was in the IDA way back in the 1970s and at that stage the focus on Europe was growing as we were entering into the EU. I think it's terrific to have a global Ireland strategy now and that Europe is such a key part of that. I would really support what the minister said about the whole of government approach. I think in the past the agencies were more separate when they were in different countries and indeed they were quite separate from the diplomats and I think that integration in the last less than 10 years I'd say I think has been something which is very much to be applauded. So I'm going to touch on four topics today so if you could turn to the next slide please. The first is the importance of competitiveness and productivity in the context of exporting. The second is just to talk a little bit about strategic trade theory and I don't think I'm going to give you a lecture on this but I want to give you the two focal points as to why the way economists think about this matters for what you read about and understand and that link with globalization and regionalization. What Irish research can tell us about the challenges that have been faced by Irish-owned companies in exporting to EU countries and the rule that policy can play in relation to Irish exports and that obviously becomes to the EU and that becomes particularly important in the context of Brexit. So if you could turn to the next slide please. So just the way of thinking about competitiveness and productivity and I'm coming from the perspective of the national competitiveness and productivity council here. So we think of it really at the country level and at the company level. So at the country level for any business in Ireland producing products and services to sell abroad or to compete with foreigners on the domestic market the cost of doing business is really important. So that's a key feature of looking at the country level at the backdrop to successful exporting and successful trading. The second thing at the national level are the national productivity drivers and that's really around what's the basis on which we're a productive economy. So we're talking here about the levels of education, the quality of the infrastructure, the investment in research and development, the investment in other supports that actually make the economy work effectively and that improve the productivity of people who are operating businesses in the economy. These are ones which government primarily controls and then secondly and thirdly at the country level there's the single market and the Euro area because those arrangements that our government has entered into with the rest of Europe presents a framework in which it's easier for people to trade into the single market. As the minister said reduce barriers and that's been I think one of the biggest successes of my lifetime in the changes that I've seen and then the Euro area means that you've no exchange rate costs at all in doing business across the Euro area countries. At the company level then there's the issue of product diversity and there's the there's the fact that companies don't grow by selling exactly the same product in the same way forever and by and large they need to diversify and they diversify by changing that product or they diversify into new markets and that's why they all knew a reference that the minister made was quite quite interesting because that's a product that's a gold-plated product if you like which we're now selling into new markets and obviously Spain trying to hopefully catch up on where Germany has got to in its appreciation of Irish butter and then finally this company level productivity and that's a lot to do with how companies in Ireland are managing their whole operations of which exporting is a part and I'll come back to that in a moment. So if you could turn to the next slide please. So I want here to make reference to Sputter but we call in economic strategic trade theory and it's linked with globalization and regionalization and just to say that globalization is a term we're all used to there are people who are critics of it and people are positive about it but really it's about the huge integration of the world across the last four decades and in particular what's become very apparent and I think the British possibly didn't appreciate fully was that an awful lot of globalization is regionalization you actually trade mostly with the countries that are relatively near to you and there's a lot of trade theories that actually explain why that is why that is the case and those theories are actually quite relevant for policy and policy design. So the two sources of this area of strategic trade theory is global strategic rivalry and this is related to Paul Krugman who won the Nobel Prize for this his work in this in this area and it's the idea that companies don't just accept themselves as being there might be a small player in a big market but that they have and they have ways of changing the competitive advantage by choosing how they market by choosing who they cooperate with by who's who's who they compete strongly with basically by by the focus that they place on market positioning and this was a very new way of thinking about trade for economists way back in the in the in the 1980s. The second area that's important here and one that you many of you will be probably familiar with is related to Michael Porter at Harvard and who wrote around 1990 about national competitiveness advantage and this was the idea that countries didn't just accept the fact that they had a certain by nature advantage economic advantages but that they in fact would have would be in a position to change that competitive advantage by their investments and something like for example setting up Science Foundation Ireland was a decision by the Irish government to strengthen our ability as a country to have a strong resource in terms of research in Ireland in the universities and then in linking universities over to the businesses so that's a kind of that's how you change competitive advantage so that's basically the country level and the company level now to make this kind of real what's been absolutely vital has been increased data from the 1990s which allows you to link to look behind the big numbers so you know you'll find a minister talking about an increase of x or a piece of n million or increase of x billion in exports and the reality is that's made up of a whole set of interactions and all of you put online who do who are involved in business know exactly what that means but what we now have since the 1990s is the ability to link those kind of aggregate figures with what lies behind at the strategic behavior of companies involved in trading marketing r&d innovating management capability etc so that's really been a big breakthrough and a hugely important part of helping Ireland to have an evidence base for the policy changes that it's it's been making so I suppose the way of thinking about trade focuses now very much on dynamics whereas back in the day there was a tendency to think you know we've got a large company it was exporting it'll be fine that you get on with that in fact that isn't what happens there's a constant dynamism in all of these markets and and you know obviously brexit for us is a huge change in the dynamic landscape in which we operate so in relation to dynamics a big issue is about diversity individual products and services that are different so you're not just producing one product but you're producing many versions versions of that product or that services and that service is actually then being honed a product to particular markets but there's also another point which I think from a policy perspective really matters and that is that exporters are at different stages of the life cycle and it's really important to know that at any stage and I think the enterprise Ireland colleagues will be very aware of this that at early stages there's a certain set of issues for you at more mature and middle stages there are other ones and then at a later stage there may be the transition of that business over to another family member or something that changes that dynamic which is really important one to recognize because it turns out to be quite significant when you explore the data the other thing is the issue of concentration specialization you want to be you want to be you want to specialize because very often you get more productive if you specialize but you don't want to be overly concentrated either in particular products or services that are narrow or in particular export markets so for example if you're selling a lot and as we've all discovered you're selling a lot into the UK and circumstances change then if you like in terms of a portfolio risk you're obviously more exposed to that change from the point of view economics there are two matters that people focus on a lot from kind of metrics perspective and you'll hear is again a lot discussed by by by ministers and by agencies and that's the number of players in the market so the increase in the number of Irish exporters that's a hugely important thing to be focusing on are we increasing the number of exporters and are they diversifying into many other different different different different countries at different markets but there's also then the average amount that they're selling so it's they're the two kind of metrics and we use that both for markets for the numbers of companies like the size of companies in terms of value versus numbers and for the products and services and then the final issue to to to really notice is that in trade statistics at the national at the aggregate level you don't see an enormous amount of change year to year you do see some changes but you see a huge amount of change taking place below those aggregate statistics and the strategic approach to to to looking at trade policy is to take account of that so if you could turn to the next slide please so I just put down here our total Irish export markets this is in goods markets in the EU in 2020 and the list of countries is down the left hand side with Belgium at the top and then Germany Netherlands France etc and almost certainly we know this is something we need to research and learn more about that the figures to Belgium and Netherlands reflect products that are probably part of global value change so those numbers are towards disproportionate to the size of the country you'd normally expect them to be closer aligned so obviously Germany but France and France could be lower these figures again in my view need to need a lot more explanation to know precisely what's happening as between those close European countries through which trade takes place particularly given where the ports are based on the right hand side just a picture to give you and and of the of the IE exports and you just see where the UK is over on the right hand side so the red arrow down is showing you basically the market that's disappearing so if you think about it what we're trying to do is looking across that planet play to look at at how we basically are going to increase our market exports so I'd now like you turn to the next slide which is just to deal with the question of what does Irish research tell us about the challenges and for Irish owned exporters to the UK to the EU I should say not the UK and so we want to this kind of research is intended to inform policymakers to inform government obviously and to give a perspective to individual cases so any of you who are on this line who are businesses you have particular experiences related to yours what government needs to know in the design of policies is how how how those perspectives differ what the the range is across them and the data that that have informed us hugely in Ireland in recent times is both data from the central statistics office and from Enterprise Ireland itself so my first bullet point here is to say and it's a it's one of my bugbears is that there's no such thing as the EU market so for people said we'll all shift from the UK to the EU market there is no the EU market each market has different characteristics and the minister mentioned mentioned language and mentioned our our our diaspora out in countries but there's also our recent immigrants here who could be important asset as well as those diaspora so that's the first thing so companies don't decide I'm going to export into Europe you have to decide I'm going to export into some particular market in Europe and given the size of a country it might be some region within that that market within Europe certainty supports entry into new markets and I think and the creation of new products so I think one of the rules of government as far as it can and it's been very challenging in the last decade between the financial crisis and now particularly with brexit but to create as much certainty as possible when there's market volatility governments should try to give certainty and as we know in many dimensions that's extremely difficult and obviously exchange rates are controlled by are done by markets but obviously if you're selling into the euro area you don't have to worry about that a product standards which was the big success of the single european market really really vital because you know you don't have to keep modifying your product on a standard basis you might for tastes but not for standards and then logistics I think another one that's come to the fore in recent times so if you're going to be exporting can you get your goods to market in Europe are there the services and shipping services that are going to let you get there is there you know what role does government have to make sure that there's a better logistics environment available for people to be able to do that fourth third bullet really is that this comes from long-standing research that the companies that export successfully typically have had higher productivity than other companies prior to exporting now there's some literature which suggests that when you export you also learn and your productivity goes up but by and large the you're a stronger stronger before you before you start to export which means that enterprise Ireland needs to be finding those companies that can support can support exporting because obviously if they're not strong before they export that could put a weakness on a successful domestic industry or into a new market if that's what they're planning to do so the fourth bullet here is that companies that have exported beyond the UK have been generally more productive than exporters to the UK only so this is work that I would have done a number of years ago which showed effectively a higher what's called export premium for companies that were exporting to the EU over to the UK from Ireland and really and these were Irish Indigenous companies and really what's going on there is that the UK was an easier market so you didn't necessarily have to be as productive going into that market as you had to be going into the EU market so it's recognizing the challenge and I think it's accepting the support of enterprise Ireland in terms of doing this and very quickly I just want to reference on the next slide some very new research that's come out from the SRI in the last couple of years and the first is it's a result that happens internationally so everybody's focusing on the big companies but most exporting companies are actually quite small they sell just a few products and they sell them into a small number of destinations that's true for every country in the world relative to size obviously it makes a difference but that's the case export growth is largely driven by increasing numbers of products and markets rather than growth of sales in existing products and markets and that's the results you might not quite expect so in fact it's really talking about that dynamic I mentioned earlier that you want to have increasing numbers of products and markets and not just say well I have these three markets I'm going to and these two products I'm going to try and just deal with those if you're going to be a long-term have long-term growth you need to be you need to be engaged in in looking all the time at new markets and at new products and services continuing exporters are dynamic so those of the previous one they're frequently introducing new products or dropping products or entering and exiting markets so the data on an annual basis for any company is huge variability when you add it up for the whole economy you don't see quite as much but it's really important for those guiding policy and supporting people exporting to realize just how much dynamic there is in the system and then finally taking a success for product to new markets is more likely to succeed than expanding the product range within an existing market so what does that mean well if you're exporting to Austria it would suggest that actually trying to sell your product into Germany is probably more likely to succeed than trying to sell extend your product range further into into Austria so with that notion particularly if you take a market that's near to you and that's like when you're already selling into it suggests that that's what you should do so final slide so what to consider when designing exports for buying supports for export growth so I would say four bullet points here established supports that scale in implementation so in other words they can't if they're terribly expensive to put in place and to operate and to implement and by expensive here I mean expensive on the on the on the business as well as on the agencies that supporting you and you want to make them scale efficiently in terms of implementation and that they can handle company diversity effectively so it's not a one shoe fits all as everybody in this call will know and it's a question of how do you manage that balance between getting a scale of implementation and managing the diversity you want to increase in certainty in the exporting environment and I mentioned that with regard to logistics and obviously it's the case that if you're selling into the eurozone the exchange of risk which is often a big risk for companies an expensive risk to take account of doesn't have to be dealt with support companies that have an export strategy fully integrated into their business strategy and strengths and that's a really big difference one of the success stories of Ireland over the last 30 years has been the integration of different functions into enterprise Ireland so that your export strategy is part of your overall strategy and that's what's shown the data to make a huge difference to your success have the capacity to adapt cost effectively to different markets so it's really important that companies are able to demonstrate that because otherwise you know supporting them and going into a market where they're not able to cost effectively adjust could actually cause them long-term long-term problems support companies that can identify key individual markets in the EU as I said at the beginning I whenever I hear somebody saying export into the EU you want to export into the markets that are in the EU and finally diversify into closely related markets so I'm talking about the could be France Belgium it could be Belgium Luxembourg or you could be Austria-Germany but they are whether closely related in terms of taste and obviously in terms of language it it adds to that and then finally and I would have to say this is chair of the national competitors and productivity council address the long-standing market and institutional failures within Ireland because they all bear down on the costs of people who are trying to export successfully so I'm talking about long-standing market difficulties like insurance and I'm talking about institutional failures and difficulties like planning these are underpinning whatever every business is trying to do and I think as a country given that business has a huge increased challenge of finding new markets we want to deal with many of these aspects that are sitting there and they're there for a long time and they don't cost money to do so I think addressing those would also be a huge benefit to people who are exporting so let me stop there Dan thank you many thanks Francis fantastic overview across a whole range of things on that point that they're there of course it is a single market in Europe but there's no EU market so to speak national and regional markets a little follow-up if I may as you said you started your career in the 70s with the IDA so you've been observing this closely one of the main objectives of this morning's discussion is to familiarize people with the opportunities there are in in Europe over time do you get a sense that business in Ireland people doing business in Ireland have just become more familiar with Europe they may have studied there they certainly travel there more often with the advent of cheap travel that Europe just feels less far away and that as a factor is making people less daunted about considering exporting when they're in business I think that is the case and I also think that probably as a country we took a little bit of a pedal off the car in terms of Europe for a period we were putting our resources into global diversification and I said you remember I mentioned that globalization for the most part in many instances is strongly based on regionalization that you're selling very successfully in your local market we did put a lot of emphasis and it's not inappropriate but you know in Ireland we sometimes prioritize everything and that doesn't isn't a successful strategy so I think it is very good that we're coming back to Europe at this stage and looking at it very and very definitely and I think you're quite correct I think there's a lot of this you know this inter-country and relationships between between companies many companies who are working jointly with companies within Europe there are people who've worked in companies in Europe who've come back here I think there's the flow of migration into and out of Ireland we've had I mean you look at our net migration figures they don't change anything as much as our gross migration figures have done and that's a huge amount of by people coming from outside Europe into Ireland and Irish people based abroad and if they move at a certain stage of their life they very often marry somebody from that country and that's a huge in the ministry mentioned it's an enormous asset for the country long term so that great opening up we've had of the country over the last 20 years is in fact a potentially a bit of hidden hidden source that we have in terms of support in us to me I mean the one that I've really been delighted to see because it was definitely not there for many many years was the close connection between the diplomatic the embassy side and the and the and the business side it was really seen that the embassies were very much on the cultural political side and the agencies did the other but you know they all come together we know that from from all the interactions that we see so I think that's been been a further big success so I'd be quite optimistic that you know years of Erasmus travel years of of of them some of the Eastern European people who came here on scholarships in the early 1990s I think there's a potential there which we should be trying to tap and the great thing about the internet is it's a it's possible to do that in a cost effective way now and our final one Francis if I may um Brexit do you do you think Brexit may have punctured a degree of inertia you know you mentioned to put taking up being taken having been taken off the gas do you think that that may have made smaller Irish businesses look beyond Britain of course it adds costs there are all sorts of downsides economically from Brexit putting up barriers will always reduce business to some extent but could it have that psychological advantage of making people think well if it's more difficult to to export to our nearest neighbor then maybe we'll think about bigger markets further revealed and that could could be advantageous to some extent in the future so the research that I did some some years back basically showed that the productivity levels of companies that were selling on the Irish market and selling into the UK market were about the same so in other words you didn't have to up your game to sell particularly into the UK now it is the case that that's gravity theory and various other economic theories could say you export to your nearest neighbors first and then you go further now with the internet with globalization it's been possible to talk about firms that are born global because their services in particular may be going international before they even even go national in some cases and so I do think that you know we've talked a lot I mean I'm sure you could find speeches going back 40 years talking about the need to sell more into Europe and indeed when we entered the EU in 73 that was a big mantra but I think it was it was more of a challenge I think now we're in a much better position to do it and I think the inertia was probably that you did have to up your game to go further that's what the data would say you just have to up your game to go further into into Europe now the question might become do I start at all by going into the UK or do I go straight into Europe and and that's an issue I think that would be a strategic issue for companies to to make it make it make it make a decision on the old economic theory was that you you've got the experience of operating in a foreign market but arguably up UK wasn't that foreign so it wasn't really that hard now of course you had the exchange rate difference so people were taking exchange rates risks and exchange rate costs all the time so Europe represents there's a sense in which Brexit has really balanced the scale in favor of looking at Europe as a market as opposed to trying to cope with what's going to be a very volatile UK market over the next decade or so. Perfect great okay I think the scene is really well set now I'd like to invite our four panelists to unmute themselves and put on their cameras and join us we have speakers from Germany, Italy and two based here in Ireland I think we've a broad range of sectors perspectives really looking forward to to hearing your views and hearing anywhere any any point that you disagree we said that beforehand disagreement can often be as interesting and informative as agreement so we're going to be very relaxed very flexible allow people to say what they want and say controversial things if they feel that's necessary so look I'm going to start with Dieter if if we have you there Dieter if not on a alphabetical order basis I can't start my video sorry okay well Dieter why don't we see if you can organize that and we'll start with Roberto and let him go go first so Roberto would you like to introduce yourself tell us a bit about you and your company to kick off sure thank you very much first of all thanks for inviting me to this panel it's extremely interesting and it's an opportunity for me to bring my experience in starting a a global company global digital company from the outside so obviously I have a very I think a peculiar view of trade and markets I started off actually studying in the University of Milan and then I have a PhD from the University of London in GIS I worked across the UK the US and Italy mainly in digital services and in telecom industry about 10 years ago I moved back from the UK to Italy to start a company doing services digital services for the healthcare and that company then was a spin-off of that company and became what is today my hellbox which is now one of the largest platform delivering digital information on healthcare products in over 70 countries so it's a purely digital platform and they actually started global you know with the global view from from the very beginning okay let me give you just just a little bit of information about the company so you understand you know what you know where we come from we provide basically digital information on the use of medicines to patients and healthcare professionals as I said in over 70 countries and in over I think now it's 46 or 47 languages are kind of lost count and we in fact we we are about providing trustworthy information across all markets and so obviously we have a European focus so I will say about we cover all the European countries and that's where actually where we started so we started expanding our services across Europe first and then we'll appeal on Europe. I don't want to take too much time for introduction. Let me just to follow up Roberto when we spoke before this event you mentioned that you tend to group markets by language so in Europe you have the German the Austrian and the German speaking parts of Switzerland for example. That's absolutely correct so let me just give you a bit of we have our users which are basically people accessing the content we provide and we group then by language in fact so as you said for example German is a cluster for us German speaking countries is a cluster for us which in Europe obviously that means Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland and we do the same you know across other parts of the globe and that's absolutely correct in terms of end users but then we have customers and for us the customers are the companies that have the sell products in the healthcare space so basically obviously pharma companies but also you know all different medical devices and so on and because of regulations we need to look them on a country specific level but in Europe regulations are more Europe wide and that makes things extremely a little more well no I wouldn't say simple because they are not they're still complicated but some of the especially the new topics and the innovation which is being developed and regulated at the EU level which is basically the EMA the European American Agency makes addressing this innovation and bringing them to market across Europe a lot easier. Okay and tell me Switzerland is not a member of the EU integrated in many ways does that make a difference when you're looking at the Swiss market compared to the German or the Austrian does its non membership full membership mean that there's a different way of dealing with the Swiss? There is not for the end users obviously the market is as open as you know but in terms of regulations there is an additional complication because you have to the market is kind of small and you have to put an extra effort to cover and to cater for that for the market and so yes I would say that it's not a huge thing but there is there is a bit difference yes. Interesting little kink there. Dita great to see you good to have you join us your organization works in making physical products rather than Roberto is providing an online service maybe you could do the same tell us a bit about yourself and the company to get it to get going. Okay you're welcome. My name is Dita Castel I'm sitting in the west of Germany I'm an engineer I was a sales manager for Mercedes-Benz and BMW here in Germany so I knew all the skills from the selling cars and all the technical details and I was looking for a challenge in 2018 and I got contact to Enterprise Ireland and looking for a new job new challenge and so I found Dennis now Dennis and found me looking for a man in their target area that was Germany where we sold some chassis over plenty of years 20 years let me say but only in the north area and due to Brexit upcoming discussions we didn't know what happened with with the UK market and they found the decision to enter further market new markets and where some experiences in the north of Germany and so it was their decision to find a man leading the market in Germany that's me now as a general sales manager here in Germany not entering only the the north of of Germany also the whole area of Germany the east the south the west it was very important to have a man here who's coming out of this area speaking the language knowing the skills of of our customers what they need yeah Germany is a is a special market that as you know German people are over the time and they have the thumb specialties and the Irish business culture is different in some areas to the German and so it's very necessary to have a person dealing with both you know with both cultures and yeah and that was my exactly my my intent to to to to go to Denison and well and it's running very successful as you know Denison is a market leader in container chassis we are building chassis behind the trucks where you can carry container boxes 20 foot 40 foot what do you see on the motorway everywhere and we're a market leader in in Ireland and in the UK we have two factories headquarters in nace near Dublin there are all chassis built and welded and then we shipped them overnight in five stack over to Lancaster there's our second factory in the in the UK and it was a good habit to to to to bring them overnight to the factory and in England they were shot blasted painted and completed and sold for the for the English market only for the English market and we didn't know what which difficulties the Brexit will bring bring to us I will come back on that later and we were affected by that and so they found the decision we need for the Irish factory it is you we have the euro so it's very easy to to to to deal with European partners with with other European countries and yeah and and so we set it on the road and yeah my first job was to to to to to found workshops all over Germany in the east in the south to to bring the the service the German is asking when I buy an Irish chassis do I have problems with spare parts or with service and we could deny that because we are now running four stores spare parts stores in Germany all over the area and my my goal is to answer immediately if a customer has problems I am on the phone the whole day they can call me in the evening they know that and and an Ireland other than the headquarter I have some some people there supporting me in every case I I send a question to Ireland technical details or something like that I receive the answers within a few hours and I can serve the customer in a perfect way and I think this is a yeah this is a key to enter a new market like Germany these are I was I was I want to follow up on that point you made about how different business cultures are in Ireland and and Germany but a question that occurred to me originally you have two manufacturing facilities yes how has brexit actually impacted because you do the initial stage of production in Ireland then on to the UK are you going to continue that is that feasible is it possible to continue doing that with brexit or are you going to have to have a continental European production facility no it it's working perfect like it is we have to deal with some difficulties of course but actually there's no factory on the continent plant we will serve Europe or main markets like Germany and now following up Austria and Swiss we will serve them from Ireland it's working perfect the first thought what you have is we need a factory on the continent so we have shorter ways or something like that but there are so many things to set up a new factory and it's not necessary because it's working very fine we were affected by brexit as you imagine we have some we have some global suppliers for let me say trucks and chassis and and many of them come from Germany so it's easy for me to sell the products here in Germany because I say hey it's an Irish German corporation and so they say okay we buy a little bit made in Germany and we have also Ireland and that's working perfect let me say the lights the real lights Asperg is from Austria it's I think it's a world market leader for for real lamps on the chassis and trucks and Heller the German company is also well known and in some chassis especially for the English or the Irish market we use Heller here in Germany we use more Asperg and so you have a frame contract with them to to supply and all over the years all the Heller lights they went to to to our factory in Lancaster and overnight when the truck was coming back when bringing the chassis over to Lancaster he took some parts and then and brought them to nays to to to to to our headquarter and actually we have the problem with the customs you have to announce there will be a parcel with with lights and this and this and this this causes so much trouble yeah that we have now the our target to get these things immediately to us Lancaster is a market for the UK and it it's running perfect everything is fine so far but we have to we have to look in the last one two years that all our suppliers will supply directly to to to nas and Heller told us yeah you can get it on the 1st of January next year and and actually we have to deal with with the customers and with the customs and to get the stuff over there that's a little bit difficult um yeah and okay good Deedra I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in time is moving on so look rather than I was originally going to go to Simon as the third speaker but I think just given your overview of everything Simon let me take go to Liz Waters first as another business person uh an island-based business person um Liz would you like to do as the previous two speakers have done just give us to introduce yourself and and and some thoughts on your business and of course good morning everybody and thanks to the minister and Francis for the very good and very interesting presentations um my name is Liz Waters I'm CEO of the Watershed Group which is an Irish-owned print packaging company with headquarters in Dublin Ireland we have several manufacturing sites in Ireland three in fact um a sales office in the UK and manufacturing site in Germany and Poland and I suppose who are our customers just about everybody globally is our customer um everybody needs package packaging every product needs a package so we're in a very dynamic situation dealing with some of the world's and Europe's most largest and most important brand and I suppose the perspective I'm bringing this morning is slightly different in that um in Europe we are working within the markets we have manufacturing sites and we're also exporting from Ireland to to Europe and from Poland and and Germany into other European company countries so we are quite export focused even though we're working within the various European companies um we're very lucky and I suppose um Francis's point about Europe not being um one market and I think that is a hugely important point for everybody listening to understand it's one of the areas that are competitors who the biggest in the world are mostly American companies it's one of the things that consistently fail to understand they see Europe as a block and you can run into all kinds of trouble by having that kind of a mindset and there is no doubt that every individual market is both different and has its opportunities in particular challenges um we're fortunate in that our our senior teams in each plant are are Germans and Poles so we have had a very interesting learning curve from them um about the various differences in the markets and but as Dieter has pointed out Germany is a particular market you have to understand the operating protocols there to do well in that market as is Poland and indeed the UK and every other company so I hope my relevance to your panelists today will be that I will be able to give them some insights into the particular ways of dealing with whatever markets they are interested in. Good thanks Liz I was interested that your two facilities on the continent are Germany and Poland Germany one can understand as being simply the biggest by population market economic size but Poland of course a big country as well 40 million people but interested to know why Poland was it related to the number of Polish people working here were their cost factors interested in in that. Well the second one the cost factors we saw Poland obviously Poland is a much lower cost base um they have a huge indigenous market themselves and there are planters on the German Polish border so we immediately saw the strategic advantage of exporting from a lower cost base that's not without its difficulty as I'm sure Dieter will understand German companies tend to like dealing with German companies so there's a whole area of work and difficulties there is to be overcome increasingly the world is becoming more global and the German markets are opening up a little bit to companies from overseas and there's no doubt that working from a lower cost base is an advantage and for us exporting into the German market which we do because we are inclined to sectorize our particular sites so we'll be very strong say in the drinks distillery business in Ireland was both sporting to different companies over the world good opportunity in Germany is that we can meet their cost base we are competitive we can we can meet it whereas exporting from Ireland into Poland would be difficult because of the disparity in the cost base. Okay and language issues Liz you know Europe is a small place with a lot of languages um but how what's your main way of dealing with that local recruitment? Well we're very lucky in that we have you know feet on the ground they're German and Polish teams um Germany is an easier market I suppose because they they speak English um and they will engage in English obviously um from a it's a very hierarchical market and people deal with it with a very in a very strong cultural way manners are terribly important in Germany how you present yourself is very important in Germany um and certainly it is seen as manners to be able to converse at a sort of maybe at a dinner level to be able to open a compensation in German that certainly gives you an advantage if you can speak even conversational German. Interesting interesting great thanks uh so thanks to our three business uh uh people uh last but not least maybe to bookend uh somebody also who is a wide-ranging perspective and and experience uh on a lot of these issues particularly around the shipping the transport of goods Simon McKeever from the Irish Exporters Association uh Simon over to you to give a bit of an intro to yourself and and what the IEA does. Thanks Dan and good morning Dan and good morning everybody um and it's great to be here to talk about this this morning so the Irish Exporters Association is the representative body for the export industry in Ireland so it's it's not just about the exporting companies it's about we have a I suppose a rounded view of the whole industry so you know 70% of our members are exporting companies they're also importing companies because there's very little and raw materials in this country other than what comes off the land so we have a good perspective of what's happening on on both sides and but also you know about 25% of our members are in the business of getting the goods on and off the island whether that's the the shipping companies the ports the airports the airlines the the auditors the rail and the rail network they're they're all members of ours as well so we we kind of get a chance to see what's going on and that um we're we're around 17 we're 17 years uh old sometimes it feels like i'm 17 years old as well but we're around a long time um and you know we represent um so we are we are a lobby group um we work very closely with government and a lot of things um we are a um we do a lot of training and education for our members particularly around bias and um and in the healthcare sector and its sustainability um we run that um you know a a visa an export documentation business um and there's some stark figures in that at the moment and i'm going to outline that in a sec um and then we run a number of different kind of events and webinars in that so it's it's a community that we it's a community represent i i my own from my own background before i did this role i i ran the british version of enterprise arland and id a's office in arland so that kind of give me a good perspective of what they do and how they go about their business of supporting companies around the world as well um so just if i can pick up on a couple of points down with yeah maybe asking me a few questions i i i think from from our there's a couple of trends that we're beginning to see um and if you look at the cso figures i think they're very much backed up um you know if you look at our exports in the first five months of this year our exports are down to pretty much every single country in the world bar britain the united kingdom and brazil and so that so our exports are down okay our imports are are up from and from most other parts of the world other than the uk and and there's this thing going on where our imports from the uk are down to billion um and from the european union they're up about two billion and they're also up from other parts of the world as well and and so we're sourcing things from france germany italy the netherlands northern arland um china melasia south korea and the united states that's where so we're beginning to spread our our wings on the import side and and i i i think one of the things that when we think of exporting we we tend to think about exporting the end product and are we very focused on on on the end product and and should we also look at how we integrate ourselves on the export side into global supply chains and i think that this is a a big challenge for us over over the next over the next while is that we think we need to we need to move our thinking not just from the end product and and designing and building companies that are looking at the end product but how do we fit into that global supply chain mode around the world and we are definitely definitely seeing um a set of trucks coming into arland since the start of this year that we have never ever seen before so so so our global our supply chain is shifting and i think one of the big opportunities we have and i spoke at an event um and and frances was talking about the role of the embassy network working alongside our agencies in in in different countries i spoke to an event that the irish embassy in france hosted two weeks ago um and i and i really think there is an opportunity about how do we get working on those combined and supply chains and how we feed into that and i and i think that um you know we have these direct shipping routes that have opened up into france which bypasses the uk we are seeing a bypassing of the uk the uk is an export market for us is going to remain extremely important and it and it will remain so um but i i think that we we are facing this challenge about diversification and and when when we talk to companies a lot of them are actually focused on the united states as a consequence of brexit before the the continent of europe and there's one row word that i've written down which i think other people have picked up on it and again i think uh france has picked it up which is familiarity um so i i think that you can have a very programmatic nature of how we develop businesses and how we get them exporting but cut there is a lot of companies that just want to go to different markets as well um and you know i think one of the reasons why we have been so successful um working with the united kingdom and with the united states is that we're extremely familiar with the language the culture the law you know we have and a deeply embedded historical link with both organizations the whole countries we just don't really have that level of familiarity with any country in europe perhaps except for maybe france um you know i i love the generation where the only language that we really learned in school uh and dare i say it was probably properly taught taught was french um and there is a level of familiarity between ourselves and and the french which which has historic um ties and i think that you know we can be extremely programmatic um and when i when i look at what we do in this country and what we do and what they do in other countries that you know i think we're extremely good at enterprise development in this country and developing those kind of type of companies but we have a limited amount of resources overseas we're a small country and and how do you develop that familiarity um and i i had a conversation after that french event that i hope that i was that i was speaking at with one of the um the honoree consulates over there and it was a fantastic conversation and it was about how do we get people in ireland talking to networks of irish irish french people in france and how do you get that level of familiarity going um so that it becomes natural for people and just picking up on something else and again i think it was um france's uh that um that that mentioned it with without um that that level of familiarity and it takes a very long time to maybe to make that happen but we look we did have the global irish network years ago but there is thousands and thousands of irish and irish connected people working all over the world there are loads of irish businesses with overseas managers um you know a number of so detours is one of those um you know who is well disposed to ireland how do we activate that piece in particular to get people going because i don't think the uk market is going to disappear for us as as an export destination and i think it will remain a very very important export destination as i said exports to the uk have actually grown this year imports have collapsed and from from from the uk so i i think the challenge for us is familiarity i think we need to keep doing what we do extremely well through our agencies through enterprise ireland i think there is a global threat on our fdi model and i and i think the opportunity for us is to is to make our in the best place to grow a sustainable business so we really really we really really have to concentrate on how we're building our indigenous businesses and growing that um and i and i as i said familiarity is one of them um i keep doing what we're doing with our with our agencies but i really really think how do we access global supply chains how do we become part of other large organizations global supply chains and feed into that uh and and sorry the piece frances was saying and i and i thought this was really interesting is that export growth in the longer terms largely driven by increased numbers of products and markets so you need to sell the same thing to different countries uh rather than selling more of the same stuff into a particular market there is an opportunity to do that if you can access global um supply chains and i and i think that's a big opportunity and myself in the sanary console we're talking about how you develop that piece between france and ireland okay thanks simon i've got first of all roberto did i see your hand up no no no okay so look um we don't have that much time left so people who are on the call who are in business looking to expand if you have specific questions to any of our panelists or all of our panelists on issues uh related to how you might expand please send them in i'm happy to put them to people um a question to following up on your uh comments simon and maybe one that's relative to you uh liz you were talking about uh simon the connectivity for imports and inputs for ireland based companies that could help become more uh competitive liz i imagine that you import stuff that are that's used as inputs into your final product before you ship it again um one of specific questions to both of you on that simon there's been more connectivity to the continent as a result of brexit um has that made it do you see companies using that extra connectivity just frequency of connections and what about the costs have costs of shipping to france like i know globally shipping costs have spiked up um and it may be difficult to filter that out but do you think the costs of shipping to the continent um and bringing stuff in from the continent will fall because of the increased connectivity so i think i think where does that price end up being because of greater connectivity is too early to say where that'll end up being at this point but certainly industry stepped in and really it was the arrival of the dfds ship and into ross lair before christmas led by industry which completely transformed that so once they came in other other shipping companies responded um so if you were to compare and and in in shipping goods to the constant time is also money so so right now it is it is still more it is still quicker to overall by and large send items through those direct shipping routes than it is to send them through the land bridge now there is companies that are continuously testing the land bridge to see if it's any quicker um and some of the northern routes into into belgium and holland and that are can be can be a little bit quicker that way but by and large into france it's quicker to go direct shipping once so that combined with a decision by a lot of the large predominantly american owned companies in ireland to to to look at how they were shipping and how they were sourcing in in the run up into christmas last year has had this displacement in fact where for britain is beginning to be bypassed as a source of inputs into into irish business our space businesses and and we're definitely seeing that so so companies are telling us they're buying from other parts of the world and you can see it in the trade figures as i said to you earlier on we started seeing at the very start of this year's trucks coming in from actually italy was the one that was was the country where we started seeing these trucks coming in that we've never seen before and what actually that then did was in the nature of irish freight where you have an awful lot of very small businesses family owned businesses carrying a lot of that freight the disruption began to happen in that because that the nature of freight is it's it's it was ireland uk pick up and drop a load in the uk into france and back in the reverse so so now what we're trying to do is marry up that rect piece so the so the goods going out that those trucks are be able to pick up something back in france and so cost wise and it is probably a bit more expensive to to ship directly time wise it's better at the moment and as for the other aspect to take into account of this is drivers and drivers ours and i know this is getting really down into the nitty gritty of it but but that driver piece is a huge issue in particularly in ireland and the uk at the moment if you have a driver's had a good night's sleep arriving in france and and he's he or she is then able to drive for for the eight or nine hours without having to stop so so there is pluses and minus to both of it okay this just in terms of your own business have you changed your sourcing because of brexit because of increased connectivity to the continent or would you plan it was absolutely a critical area that we worked on prior to to brexit and it was one of the things in fairness to enterprise ireland and to the irish business community we got out of the stops very quickly and we were all forced to present our brexit strategies and to write them up and we work with enterprise island quite closely and we had to submit our brexit strategy about a year in advance so it focused all the senior team on where you know the issue is in supply chain and we would we would source our our goods from some of the biggest companies in the world and obviously they worked very hard on it so certainly the biggest raw material we buy is paper and we buy it from a very large multinational company they have bypassed the uk and they now have a depot in ireland so we in fairness we got out of the stops quite quickly as a business community there is certainly a drive amongst all of us to bypass the uk there's no doubt about that simon is right anything that can be sourced from the original source because many of the goods that we were importing were maybe coming from germany but coming from a depot in the uk you know that has stopped we're finding that it's coming much more directly so far we haven't seen a huge increase in the cost but as you know the cost of ingredients is sort of a hyperinflationary market now prices have just gone through the roof and just about everything okay okay good rebeto can i come over to you and i ask a question about when you sit down to look at a new market a market that you haven't been in say you know i don't know finland i don't know if you're in finland a country with a very unusual language not a big market what what what do you do as your first steps to get into that market so uh well we've done this process a number of times so it's it's kind of consolidated now the first thing we do is to establish a presence which means attracting interest from end users so that means building the content so providing local content that they they can access so this is the first step and that will give us the opportunity to establish a presence to make a brand known okay we couple that with some advertising we're talking about digital advertising of course okay to make sure that people are aware that we exist in the services we provide that's just to build basically an audience and the potential and potential market that we can then go to uh we have two basically business routes one is through e-commerce so we usually look for partners local partners that can sell the product for which we supply the information for through our site okay and we don't do direct we do we look for local partners because obviously that cuts the cost of shipping and everything so we look for a local presence as close as possible to the end customer and the other thing is we look for potential company for companies in in the healthcare space they want to buy our services and that's something that we usually do through partnerships so we still look for local partners to be able to talk directly to the the companies there it's I have to say for the big for the largest companies we we can drive this uh prospecting let's say activities um from where we are in Italy but for uh there are hundreds of say thousands of smaller ones where it's extremely difficult to do remotely and so it works very well if you do through part from a local partner so that's basically our strategy and it's worked across all markets um basically sometimes country by country sometimes by areas that really depends okay good okay so maybe not despite being an online business some traditional things uh are remain the same needing local local people absolutely absolutely correct absolutely correct and the easiest and most cost effective way is is to do this through partnerships perfect yeah okay but I think that's a really important insight Liz you want to come in there yes um as a point that Francis underlined and Simon also followed up on I don't think we can overestimate the importance of networking um for entry into these markets most of them particularly Germany have very strong Irish German networks the embassies are a great source they'll always open their doors to any sort of suggestions if you want to have particular connects the enterprise Ireland but I think particularly in this digital world now post COVID where we're doing business much more online the the importance of leveraging leveraging your network can simply not be made more important I think okay good massive amount of Irish people in Germany it's quite astonishing the amount of Irish people that are in senior positions and in German companies okay well maybe go to Dieter on that Dieter you mentioned that issue about business culture if uh somebody from an Irish small a small Irish company was looking to start in the German market yeah what what sort of things would you say this is important this is the cut the business culture in in Germany is very particular about uh we're both wearing ties this morning I don't know I do in many parts of the world nobody wears a tie anymore um you know any thoughts on on thing advice you would give to Irish businesses going into Germany for the first time yeah okay you have to speak the language of our customers and they expect if the salesman comes you can go to the car house everywhere you have to wear a tie of course you you can you can't do it but they have a quick opinion about you and I think it's not very helpful yeah your list figured out that we have some traditions and if a businessman comes they they expect to be absolutely in time not one minute too late this is very important in Germany if you have an appointment at 10 o'clock be there if you're too late you can go in many in many in many areas it is like it is um in my opinion you have to analyze the market which you want to enter um which are your target customers in which areas are you dealing and so many questions you have to analyze yeah how to how to enter this market what are the habits in this country and then you can deal with it of course let me say um we had a man in in Ireland and us before I came um he you speak let me say 60 70 percent German and he tried to enter the market from us um but he hadn't the the direct contact to the customers or so he he was speaking English of course um but you have to look the east of Germany was influenced by Russia and so they didn't have any English language um um learning um in in in the east of Germany they learned Russia and if you come now and speaking English there they won't understand you and um yeah you you must know this and um yeah these are some facts this is what what great that that's the interesting stuff Liz but back to you another similar question I put to Roberto about getting into new markets and what your market entry strategy is how it differs country by country what your experience has been are there any countries that you found particularly easy particularly difficult to start in well I think as I said earlier I think all come all countries have their particular challenges and it's just understanding what they are what we do is that we are dealing with some of the international brands so our strategy has always been to try and be a supplier to them globally so if we are supplying them in the German market we look to see what are the other markets that we can leverage that into and I suppose it's similar for all countries whether you're operating in Ireland and you're dealing with an international company in Ireland a low-flat hanging fruit would be to try and be a supplier to them whatever other countries their manufacturing is so that has been very much our strategy to leverage the actual contracts we have and work on them globally we have a European sales team and what we would say as a strategy is it's a commercial decision of the senior team where we produce it so we're not fixated on particularly producing market specific so if we have a speciality in Ireland or in Germany we may it is the commercial decision of the group where we export or where we produce it so we are very much leveraging our portfolio of companies to grow globally across the world really I mean we're exporting some to distilleries all over the world now based on our experience in the Irish beverage market so it's really again leveraging your business network as well as your personal network okay good I just want to flag we're very close to the end now if if people have particular points that they didn't get to make or just to closing thought I'll probably just come to each of you in the final four minutes for just one minute if you have something that you do want to say or something that you feel you didn't get to say or a reaction or whatever but Simon you interact with an awful lot of your members who are exporters um do you hear and you mentioned that France that particular familiarity in Ireland maybe more than other continental countries but from you know what you hear from your members is are there continental countries that are maybe easier or more difficult to to penetrate or for exporters either you know new exporters or those who are who already have a familiarity with exporting I suppose the ones I if I the ones that they find the most attractive are beyond doubt Germany and um and France and as purely the the scale and size of those markets um and there's there is reasonable links in there I think you know you look at and again France has put the statistics up or put the number put I mentioned it when you look at the likes of Belgium Netherlands and perhaps even now France because the amount of stuff that's going through it is that the trade figures into those countries are largely skewed by by what's happening in say the Port of Rotterdam um but I I go back to what I said you know when we talk to our a lot of our members they you know even now they're kind of pink in US rather than Europe um because there is this level of familiarity with with the with the United States and just one final kind of thing on it I always recall um and at the time I was working for the for the for the British government the um back in 2010 when we were in the depths of a recession here there was this massive push to there was this massive push then for market diversification because you know we needed to sell wherever we could at the time and there was a huge push into the Far East in particular you know China was a huge focus of it once once the where the economy started picking back up in in 2013 and that you know we saw a lot of the members really just beginning to refocus on the markets that were easier and I and I think that that that Brexit and the other the other big trend by the way that's going on in the world is you are going to see a localization of supply chains going on and you know driven I think by trade and I don't want to say disputes but trade and disagreements for want of a better word and I think that companies particularly larger global companies are going to want to have a more secure source of supply for Ireland and that means more within the boundaries of the EU and I go back to what I said it's not always about making the product or the service and then finding a customer which is the customer who buys that end product it is how do we fit into what is going to be this changing world of more localized global supply chains are more localized supply chains which will go around the world so I think we need to take your thinking ever so slightly that it's not just about making the finished products but how do we integrate into that that system thanks Simon and just to flag to people the third and final event of this series will take place on Friday the 24th of September and I think that very issue of supply chains and changing supply chains is something we'll dig deeper into in that final event look we're coming to the end now I'll go around to each of the speakers again maybe Simon maybe that might have been your concluding remark but if you want to come back in let me know the importance of networking and meeting people getting to know people clearly that has been really hard during the pandemic period um Roberto I'll maybe ask you all just how important just the personal connections in terms of meeting people has that been impacted by the problems traveling has it affected your business and in the future do you see business relationships more being built up like this but via zoom or will you go back to travel to meet people thoughts on just that personal dimension so it's it's it's kind of funny for us the travel restrictions for us meant two things one it was more difficult to engage with partners local partners because at least at the very beginning you have to establish a personal connection sometimes it's difficult to do it via via computer screen so that put a bit of a hold on a number of activities but on the other side the communication with our users and the use of data on the internet has increased enormously so it was actually a great growth time for us and we started getting for example because there is a way for people using our services to contact our customer care and the questions we get are you know more diverse and incredible um started from you know we started getting contacts from people in the in the airline industries looking for disinfectants that were compatible with the regulations local regulations they could use to clean disinfect the insides of planes or seats uh all these sort of things so that wasn't there before I mean obviously that was you know interest and demand for a number of products and for information on how to use those products that was obviously you know triggered by by this epidemic and needs to use you know need to use it new applying safety regulations and so on so it was it's been incredibly you know interesting for us because um you know on the on a digital world it's it's been a really great growth I mean it was great because obviously it wasn't a funny time but it from from a from a communication point of view this we've seen a tremendous growth okay great and more or less the same question and and closing thoughts to to both of our other panelists Liz first okay well I think it's been very interesting and in fact it has kind of driven a change in our strategy certainly we didn't find it too difficult for existing contracts and we would look maybe in the future at having less feet on the ground now in the sense in the terms of sales people there's no problem growing existing contracts where it became more difficult was that people didn't want to change so new business entry became more difficult I think just having an initial webinar is more difficult in low-hanging proves in some ways the advantage of you grow more organically because you're getting more from from the same customers but actually growing new markets and sectors are certainly we found it more difficult okay great and final word to you Dijer okay um normally before corona I traveled to Germany for two three days in the area possibly the east to south and I prepared those trips one two weeks in advance make appointments due to corona I was not able to travel I worked from a home office of course existing customers are very good supported by phone by email it's working perfect but if you have new customers which are interested they want to meet you and yeah and actually in Germany it becomes much more easier to travel again and so I'm planning the next trips to areas which I want to enter which I want to make stronger a little bit and meet these customers and after that I have the connection by phone by mail and this is working perfect okay good look we've hit 930 we've we've scratched the surface I think we could have could have spoken to all of the panelists individually for for an hour so much to learn from you all and it's been personally very interesting I hope for those who logged on and particularly those who are considering exporting and internationalizing for the first time I hope there were insights and thoughts there I'd like to thank you all everyone who joined us here the four panelists frances the minister and our partners enterprise Ireland in the event for this event as I say the next event in this series of three will be on the 24th of September so I'd like to wish you all a very nice summer and hopefully see most of you back again at the at the end of September so have a good day and and a good summer thanks a lot bye bye it was a pleasure then thanks very much thank you thank you very much bye bye thank you