Portugal has been attracting a growing number of companies across a wide range of industry sectors. The country can offer the most modern and technical services within an environment of innovation created by a well prepared workforce.
Business Activities
This section presents some of the many attractive business activities:
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Aeronautical - It represents a Sector with a huge growth potential, mainly because Portugal is involved with several institutions and programmes focused on R&D for the Aeronautics sector, such as: European Space Agency (ESA); European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and Portugal is a member of several aircraft programmes in Europe, such as the NH90 or the A400M;
- Biotechnology - Portuguese government started in 2007 serious international partnerships between Portuguese universities and international renowned institutions such as Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), Carnegie-Mellon University, University of Texas at Austin and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft;
- Information & Comunication Technologies - The mobilization of the information society, as explicitly expressed in the government’s program, strongly depends on the increase of general access to the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), particularly the Internet, with direct impact on the citizens quality of life, safety and work;
- Renewable Energy - The Portuguese Government intends to exceed the objectives defined for 2010 (Directive 2001/77/EC). With a target of 39%, Portugal has assumed the 3.º most ambitious aim of the EU 15 for the renewables;
- Shared Service Centres - The country has a diversity of qualified, multilingual workforce and a cost competitive modern telecoms network, combined with cut-rate real estate readily available. The country’s language-skilled workforce and flexibility has made companies such as IBM BTO, Siemens, Cisco and Alcatel to locate their SSC in Portugal and by doing so, saving up to 58% of costs in these divisions.
Investment Opportunities
The Portuguese Government has developed a range of measures to cheer the investor’s initiative. Through the aicep Portugal Global, the portuguese Business Development Agency, have been created several proactive commercial tools specially directed to the foreign business.
Namely a dossier which describes, not only, some Portuguese potential regions but also the dealing opportunities, as well as the commitments and the support given by the Portuguese State.
In addition, to facilitate the investors work, AICEP Portugal Global offers a brief economic overview of Portugal, focused in the recent changes that occurred in the external trade and foreign direct investment.
Export Companies
To encourage trade between national and foreign companies, the AICEP Portugal Global provides information to possible buyers and promotes Portuguese services within investors.
In fact, Portugal hosts a large number of sector networks within key industries representing manufacturers, consultants and service providers, making it an excellent platform to locate new business partners and suppliers.
The AICEP Portugal Global website has a database of export companies, where you can chose a portuguese product, sector, company or brand. Search our exporter’s data base and find the partner you are looking for.
Fairs
The AICEP Portugal has a trade fairs database that disposes information about national and international exhibitions. If you are an exhibitor, an exhibition organizer or an exhibition visitor, you will be glad to have this service that gives you detailed data useful to plan the trips to the events.
You can search the fairs by exhibition name, by exhibition date or by exhibition type. The list is updated regularly; however, the details need to be checked with the organizers before you travel because changes may have been made.
Case Studies
Several companies that decided to establish their business in Portugal are outstanding examples of success. Autoeuropa in the automotive industry, REPSOL in the energy industry, Bosch in the electric and electronic sector, Microsoft in the ICT area, IKEA in the wood factories industry, Artenius in the production of PET and CISCO are some of those companies.