What Greece saw and is opening in the Emirates

Mission to the United Arab Emirates: George Lampiris

Greece is seeking business opening in the United Arab Emirates, following business successes such as the acquisition of the Greek Instashop based in Dubai two years ago from the delivery giant, Delivery Hero, but also the recent activity of the waste management and utilization company, Polygreen with factory in the Emirates in joint venture with the Arab bee’ah.

Our country is currently participating in the World Expo 2020 exhibition in Dubai, which was attended by Capital.gr. Our Greek pavilion in the exhibition in which 192 countries participate with their own national pavilions each, focuses and presents strategic pillars of the Greek economy.

In particular, the arms of energy, agri-food, shipping, tourism, technology, culture, human capital, industry and health sciences are presented at the Greek stand. The message of the Greek participation focuses on the phrase: “Greece of tomorrow, today”.

The exhibition hosts three different types of kiosks. There are countries that leased land on a large scale and then built their own national kiosks.

In addition, there are countries that rented the shell of the building ready and shaped the interior of the stand as in the case of Greece as well as developing countries that submitted the plans to the organizer and she undertook to create the building on their behalf.

The “golden” pavilion of 100 million euros of Saudi Arabia – The budget of the Greek pavilion

From the international participations, national stands stand out, such as that of Saudi Arabia, where the cost for its construction exceeded 100 million euros.

We mention respectively that the total budget based on the relevant announcement of the competition from the Greek side amounted to 200 thousand euros, an amount which includes in addition to the design of the stand, publicity and accompanying promotions for our participation in the exhibition.

Expo 2020, which started in October 2021 and ends on March 31 of this year, is the postponed event that was originally planned for 2020, but due to the pandemic was postponed for two years later. In addition to the business background, the participation of the countries also contains nuggets of culture and history, with each of the participants bringing through its presence a wider network of components that characterize it with the ultimate goal of extroversion and opening new roads in the wider Arab peninsula.

The “secret” pavilion of Morocco

A special case is the Moroccan national pavilion, as in a series of meetings that took place before the start of the exhibition between the participating countries and the organizers, it never revealed what exactly it was going to build. The members of the Moroccan mission acted in complete secrecy and the country commissioned its own builders to create its own national pavilion, from which a castle on the exhibition site emerged.

G. Smyrlis: Extroversion step for expansion in the Emirates

As stated by the Secretary General of International Economic Relations and Extroversion of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and President of Enterprise Greece, Giannis Smyrlis, on the sidelines of the exhibition, Greece is currently taking a step of extroversion, where in addition to its contacts with Dubai, there is also the development of economic and business contacts with other Arab states such as Kuwait and Qatar.

Greece seeks to promote the development of renewable energy sources as a model in the energy sector, citing the example of Astypalea, with the implementation of the project “Astypalea: Smart & Sustainable Island” with the aim of making this island “green”.

In the field of shipping, Greece currently maintains about 20% of the global merchant fleet, with the result that this sector is one of the main points of view at Expo 2020. Shipping apart from the transport sector for products and services , also functions as a body of knowledge and culture by sea, uniting Europe and Asia.

The example is the acquisition of the Greek Instashop

In technology, Greece has deleted a series of steps lately, with the typical case of the acquisition of Instashop by Giannis Tsioris. The company, which was founded in 2015 in Dubai to order fruit, vegetables, pharmaceuticals and other products through its online platform, was acquired in 2020 by the German group Delivery Hero (owner and efood), for $ 360 million. Recently, the Deputy Minister of Development, Christos Dimas, was in the Emirates, where he met with the Minister of State, responsible for entrepreneurship and small and medium enterprises, Dr. Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi and the Deputy Minister of Industry and Advanced Technologies, Omar Al Suwaidi. In the context of this trip, start-ups of Elevate Greece participated in the Greek business mission, namely:

DeepMed Greek Branch

Emphasis DigiWorld SA

BibeCoffee Limited

DIGISEC SA

EV Loader

HLECTRON

Medoid AI PC

METIS Cyberspace Technology SA

ORamaVR SA

Payment Components

[i2.d] technologies

IONOS

ACROMOVE INTENTION

PARKINGSTREAM IKE

IDNA GENOMICS

In addition, Greek research centers participated. In particular, the following were:

National Center for Research in Natural Sciences “Demokritos”

Hellenic Pasteur Institute

National institution of Research

Institute of Technology and Research

National Center for Research and Technological Development

Athena Research Center

Hellenic Center for Marine Research / ELKETHE.

The 4th Generation Technology Park, ThessINTEC, also participated in the same mission.