Bridging business between Lithuania and Sweden

SCCL organized third business mission to Sweden on October 9-10 in 2018. We had two intensive days full of meetings and visits on which expanded the knowledge on latest business and political trends in Sweden as well as made useful business contacts.

Participants have broaden their knowledge about current business and political environment in Gothenburg region and Sweden as a whole. Honorary Consul Birgitta Jacobsson Ekblom, who has been working within relations with Lithuania for over 15 years, introduced us to her daily work to Lithuania’s and Swedish cultural relations. Business Region Göteborg, which is organization responsible for business development in the city and region of Gothenburg, presented latest business trends, vision of sustainable growth and innovative projects in Gothenburg region. However, before doing business in Sweden or with Swedish business community, it is essential to know current political matters and issues for which we had an exclusive opportunity to meet and discuss with Governor Anders Danielsson.

The goal of every business mission to Sweden is to provide as many business contacts as possible. For this, we had a very great networking evening with one of the biggest network of owners and entrepreneurs in Sweden – Founders Alliance. Many companies were highly interested in making business contacts with Lithuanian companies, some of them already have strong vision to open up branches in our country. Such an open approach from Swedish business representatives’ side definitely made networking more reasonable for useful future synergies. What is more, company fair in Scanautomatic & ProcessTeknik brought surprisingly great connections too where some of participants made business meetings right on spot! On the other hand, we met with Lithuanian working in Sweden who are useful for exchanging experiences and getting new contacts. Luckily quite many Lithuanians, who work in large companies such as Volvo or own business in Sweden, gathered for lunch and made some successful contacts.

The main message which we carried out is Sweden’s enormous work in making business more and more sustainable. Stenaline, one of the world’s largest ferry operators, is taking huge efforts in order to make ships run on clean energy by switching vessel power to batteries, fuel cells and biofuel. Stenaline Germanica is the first vessel to run on methanol. Also, they are already using solar panels in terminals and are aware of switching off lights and shut down machines when not in use. These solutions reduce CO2 emissions by several thousands of tonnes! However, Greencarrier’s mission is to be top of mind for sustainable transport solutions. Environmental work is a prioritized and essential part of their business.

We are very thankful to Honorary Consul Birgitta J. Ekblom who significantly contributed to this business mission. Thanks to Commercial Attache Justinas Pagirys, Svenska Mässan representative M. Couture, Business Region Göteborg, Governor of Västra Götaland region A. Danielsson, Founders Alliance, Member companies Greencarrier Göteborg and Stena Line. Special thanks to Lithuanians for coming to network lunch and all the delegation for taking part in this business mission. We are looking forward to organizing another successful business mission next year!