Day one of Luxembourg’s packed economic delegation to Portugal saw representatives tour a company, meet startups and visit Uptec, the science and technology park of the University of Porto.
The three-day trip focuses on digital economy, space, sustainable construction, tourism and fintech, sectors which Luxembourg is also developing.
“We have very strong relationships in Portugal already, but we have to build new ones,” LHoFT CEO Nasir Zubairi told Silicon Luxembourg. “In terms of our mission to be able to help develop Luxembourg’s financial services sector, from the perspective of digital, it’s about building connectivity, finding new opportunities, new businesses, new people, new solutions in Portugal that may be able to help Luxembourg.”
Uptec
Launched in 2007, Uptec’s goal is to foster the creation and development of business projects in the arts, sciences and technologies through knowledge sharing between the university and market. It does this by providing a link to the University of Porto and its R&D+i departments and interface institutes.
In 2021, it supported 204 projects, of which 35 were new, an ecosystem that employed some 1,900 talents and sustained almost 6,500 jobs. Of the 204 projects, 133 were startups and 39 were innovation centres.
Uptec is also a European Space Agency business incubation centre and has supported six innovative space startups since 2014.
Among the businesses located there which are attending the official economic mission are SolarCleano, a solar farm cleaning technology company, which has an office in Luxembourg. Losch Digital Lab, a subsidiary of Losch Luxembourg, will also be pitching during the visit. Established in 2018, the firm is creating the next generation of software products to bring technological solutions to the field of mobility.
#LUinPORTUGAL
🇵🇹🇱🇺 The delegation visited the Science & Technology Park of the @UPorto where the companies received a presentation of #UPTEC and various #startups located there. What a great networking opportunity with the UPTEC Startup network! pic.twitter.com/x1c7xyXeVI— Chambre de Commerce du Luxembourg (@ccluxembourg) May 10, 2022
Why Portugal?
Considered “strongly innovative”, Portugal has consistently retained the place of fourth-most developed country in terms of innovation, on the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS 2020) listing since 2016. It holds the “SME innovation” top spot for the second year in a row. And, the EIS 2020 report highlights that its strength are at the innovation environment level, the attractiveness of the research system and entrepreneurial innovation.
What next?
On Wednesday, the economic delegation will visit a number of companies and attend the conference Interconnected ecosystems driving entrepreneurship and innovation, organised by Startup Luxembourg and Startup Portugal. Among the highlights are expected to be an agreement signing between a Luxembourg startup and a Portuguese investment bank.
More on this topic here with the 10 portuguese startups to be on the lookout for.
@siliconluxembourg Follow Silicon Luxembourg the way to Portugal 🚀 Go International – Official Mission to Portugal 😎🇱🇺🇵🇹 Até já Portugal!!#siliconluxembourg #LUinPORTUGAL #luxembourg #portugal #startups ♬ TNT – Back in Black
