The "Technium Challenge" opens to French companies

With the aim of promoting high technologies, electronics, opto-electronics, biotechnologies and other modern sectors of innovation, the  "TECHNIUM CHALLENGE" opens its doors to "Big Ideas and Big Projects".

This challenge was created in Wales in 2003 with the aim of “boosting” UK companies. In three years it has offered about 139 companies the opportunity to take advantage of the advice and support of the economic development agency " International Business Wales " and its partners to enhance the success of their projects. In view of the great success of this initiative, the Welsh authorities wished to extend this competition to international markets for 2008.

Consequently, French companies and start-ups working in the field of high technologies for less than 6 years can present their projects and participate in this challenge. The selected companies will benefit at every stage of this competition from personalized advice to help them to prepare their Business Plan. This selection will take place in three well defined phases.

Firstly, the applicants submit a summary of their Business Plan to the in-country Technium Challenge representative, in this particular case to John Rees (see address at the foot of the article) for the French competitors. Subsequently, they will be informed whether they qualify to enter this competition; then those qualified will be asked to prepare a full Business Plan. " International Business Wales " offers assistance to the selected candidates to help them to constitute this document. All the definitive files must be presented by the deadline date 4th April 2008.

The French company prize-winner will be invited to Wales at the end of May 2008 for one week, during which he will have the opportunity to visit the various "Technium" centres throughout Wales and to meet the economic actors within his field of activity. Naturally he will attend the prestigious Challenge Awards Dinner that will be held in Cardiff at the end of May 2008.

This brilliant winner can then compete with the other countries prize-winners by participating in the " International Grand Prix ", which besides the fact of competing with the cream of international innovation, offers the overall winner one year’s free desk space within a Technium centre of his choice.

An initiative to discover the Technium and the market

This competition is especially interesting for a young company because it offers the participants the possibility to be immediately in contact with the big Anglo-Saxon market, and its vast territorial diversity. Indeed, we cannot ignore the impact of this market in a business world deeply marked by the habits and customs and especially by the language of our “over-Channel cousins”. Another attraction of this challenge is discovering the numerous specialized equipments and performances to be found in the Techniums in Wales, together with their individual specificities. This organization offers promising future outlooks for the young companies, which normally stay there during three years alongside big leaders of industry, before taking off alone towards future industrial success.

Wales possesses 10 Techniums all over the country from North to South, each with their own specifications. In Bridgend, the  "SONY Technology Centre" hosts the "Technium Digital@Sony" incubator conceived to help the young technology businesses to turn their ideas into commercial reality. The ‘design for manufacture’ focus offers an ideal environment for those producing electronic / digital devices (keyboards for mobiles, camera commands …) The  " Centre for Advanced Software Technology (CAST ) " at Bangor in North Wales, is a specialized incubator working in partnership with the University of Bangor and  "SERCO"  to develop software applications of visualisation and communication technologies.

The Technium in Llanelli, near Swansea (South West Wales), specialized in engineering, mechanical performance and design, attracts the builders of racing cars (F1, F3, Promotion and Rallies) and companies specialized in aerospace development, to develop their performances. At St Asaph, in the North, the “OpTIC” Technium is a must of R and D, particularly well equipped for the development of optical devices and their applications. This cluster is essentially implicated in the development of innovative products for the opto-electronic industry, and that of precision lenses which equip the big telescopes. For this specificity, this Technium offers a research and development centre specially conceived for studying various materials, glass and composites, and their polishing procedures thanks to a polisher with diamonds, with the aim of obtaining maximum performances by reducing production costs.

We also discovered on this site the "Photonic Academy", dedicated to the discovery of the use of lasers by the pupils and by inciting them to develop objects using lasers, (fences, alarms, starter gadgets…which they make ingeniously), taught by the Doctor Ray Davis, the enthusiastic professor who communicates his knowledge to very young with much charisma. To end, on the Bagland Energy Park, near Swansea, the " Sustainable Technologies Technium" welcomes industries specialized in the sectors of renewable energies, materials and geo-environment technologies.

We can realize, after this enumeration, that it is this variety which unmistakably constitutes the wealth of this country … This variety is now open to French companies thanks to the “Technium Challenge”. This formula will allow those who try their luck to enter a new world by discovering another way of developing companies. Good luck to those who take this decision … And especially you should not forget that "LUCK REWARDS the AUDACIOUS ".

www.technium.co.uk
Contact: John Rees – Tel. +33 (0)613 97 57 06
                                   Tel +33 (0) 960 44 84 38
Email : john.rees@wales-uk.com