On 11-12th of March, SECPhO participated at B2B partnering event «Promoting Business Partnerships in Greece» in Athens organised by the Greek Ministry for Development, Competitiveness, Infrastructure, Transport & Networks and with the support of the Enterprise Europe Network – Hellas in order to foster and accelerate international collaboration of companies from Greece.

A conference about current economical situation and possibilities of attracting investments to Greece was held during the first day of event. The next day the core and main activity took place that was pre-selectedB2B networking meetings with Greek organisations. The entities could register at the website of event (http://www.b2match.eu/athens-b2b/pages/home) and arrange 20 minute face-to-face meetings with possible collaborators. There were no pre-defined industrial themes or sectors of activity so the event attracted a significant number of interested organisations: more than 400 from Greece and almost 200 from around the world resulting in more than 1200 B2B meetings in total during one day.

SECPhO was the only organisation representing Spain. We had 10 meetings with innovative photonics related organisations from Greece. LOGICON LABS, PRISMA ELECTRONICS, LAMDA TECHNOLOGY, Institute for Research and Technology, Thessaly (IRTETH/CERTH), Institute of Communications and Computer System/Lab of BIOPHOTONICS AND APPLIED BIOPHYSICS, Center for Technology Research and Innovation (CETRI), ENVIRONMENTAL ANALYSIS LABORATORY, NCSR «DEMOKRITOS» were companies and research centres interested in joint initiatives or contacts for European research projects with Spanish photonics industry. SECPhO offered full contribution and help via being a contact point to reach out our members and network in Spain. In addition to that, we highly encourage our members to contact us in case of any need or activity in Greece.

Moreover, two interesting meetings were held with Greek innovation clusters, namely Hellenic photonics cluster (H-PHOS) and Micro/Nano electronics industry cluster (Corallia). H-PHOS is a young cluster representing 17 members from industry and more than 10 from R&D+i. During the meeting common member activities were recognised and next meeting will be held on 29th of April during the annual Photonics21 meeting in Brussels to concretise the future collaboration actions to bring together Greek and Spanish photonics industry. Similar result was achieved with Corallia cluster as well. The next meeting will take place on April 12th in Barcelona. Follow SECPhO news on future actions and initiatives with these clusters to get the most out of such collaboration!

To conclude, the B2B event results exceeded the expectations of the event organisers and attendees including SECPhO as well. There will be definitely new initiatives between Spain and Greece in future and SECPhO encourages its’ members not to hesitate to contact us with any kind of help or contact need in whole Europe, from now on in Greece as well!