Tuesday 20 June 2023

Leading the joint Enterprise Ireland and IDA trade mission to Germany and France recently, enterprise minister Simon Coveney attended VivaTech in Paris, Europe’s biggest startup and tech event. He met with French captains of industry and public sector representatives to raise the profile of Ireland’s tech innovation offering to France.

Six Enterprise Ireland-backed companies

Minister Coveney also met six Enterprise Ireland-backed SportsTech startups, representing Ireland in Viva Tech’s startup pitching contest. The six Enterprise Ireland-backed companies taking part in the Sports Tech category include Access Earth Limited, Head Diagnostics, MoveAhead, Output Sports, RugbySmarts and Volograms.

New deals and partnership signings between the four Enterprise Ireland client companies and their French partners include:

• Terra NutriTECH, a global leader in precision livestock nutrition solutions to sign a €10m agreement with French partner Pature Vision, to provide farmers in the French market with precision mineral supplements. Earlier this week, Terra NutriTECH also signed a contract worth €5m with German company ASL GmbH, a distributor of feed additives and agricultural technologies.
• Mercury has been named the general contractor for a major expansion project for Digital Realty data centre, outside of Paris.
• Decarbonisation company CoolPlanet will sign a strategic partnership agreement with LDC Group, the largest poultry meat group in Europe to support LDC Group to reduce electricity and gas consumption during their production process.
• Irish unicorn and B2B payments company Transfermate will announce its growth in France providing an international payments solution for the global French perfume distributor DC Interbeauty.

Enterprise minister Simon Coveney said: “Irish companies are forging increasingly strong business links in France, with Enterprise Ireland client companies achieving record export sales of €1.61bn to France last year.

"Today’s announcements by Terra NutriTECH, Transfermate, Mercury and CoolPlanet are a great representation of the scale of the business opportunities for Irish companies across sectors such as ICT, clean technologies, construction, agritech and fintech in France.”

Patrick Torrekens, Enterprise Ireland country manager for France said: “Our trade mission to France presents a really important opportunity to build on Irish-French business relationships and support Enterprise Ireland client companies to scale in the market.

"We continue to see strong growth opportunities for Irish companies in sectors such as agritech, fintech and business services, construction and life sciences and we support our clients to enter and scale in the market through our two French offices in Paris and Lyon.”