Copernicus: Portugal promotes the internationalization
of European SMEs in South Africa
11 European SMEs will participate in the event promoting the Copernicus Program and the Eureka Network in South Africa.
This is an AIR Centre and Portuguese Space Agency, Portugal Space initiative that aims to promote the internationalization of these companies.
The European Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) that will have the promotion and internationalization opportunity in South Africa under the Framework Partnership Agreement on Copernicus User Uptake (FPCUP*) have been announced. The choice of these companies resulted from a tender promoted by the AIR Centre and the Portuguese Space Agency – Portugal Space, which aims to promote the use of the Copernicus Program and to stimulate the internationalization of the SMEs that use the Copernicus data in the development of their businesses.
The 11 companies selected by the jury, which also included EUSPA – European Union Agency for the Space Programme and the South African ZASpace, are: Agroinsider (Portugal), Applied Aerial Technologies (Ireland), Bold Robotics (Portugal), Climate X (UK), COSMOS PICS (Portugal), Deep Planet (UK), Lelieur BV (Belgium), MATEREO (Portugal), PIXAIR (Portugal), Spin.Works (Portugal) and SuperVision Earth (Germany).
These SMEs will be present in the EUREKA meets the Atlantic event, promoted by the Portuguese presidency of the world’s largest network of cooperation in Research and Development, which will take place in Cape Town (South Africa) on the 29th and the 30th of November. This is the first in a series of four events that aim to contribute to the promotion of the Copernicus data and the internationalization of European enterprises in Africa and South America, and the second of five events to increase Eureka network’s reach.
Carried out in the scope of the activities financed by FPCUP, it also seeks to fill a gap that many SMEs face when they try to develop downstream applications based on data from the European Earth Observation program: the difficulty in consolidating international networks that can open new doors to new partners, markets and potential clients that may be interested in their services.
Supporting the SMEs’ internationalization, Portugal Space and AIR Centre are also contributing so that Africa and South America can take advantage of the countless possibilities offered by Copernicus. Satellite images and products generated by the program enable the creation of value-added services that have a positive impact in several sectors, like agriculture, forestry, resource optimization or infrastructure management.
Brazil, Cape Verde and Nigeria will be the destinations of the next FPCUP action events in 2022. In these countries, European companies — that will be selected from future tenders — will have an exceptional network opportunity that aims to boost their visibility in international markets, leading to the expansion of activity.
[*This event is supported by the European Union’s Caroline Herschel Framework Partnership Agreement on Copernicus User Uptake under grant agreement No FPA 275/G/GRO/COPE/17/10042, project FPCUP (Framework Partnership Agreement on Copernicus User Uptake), Action No 2020-3-5, “Copernicus SMEs – Atlantic Ocean Interactions (AIR Centre, Portugal Space)”, SGA grant no 13.]
