Polish accelerator to open Tel Aviv branch

The Lublin Science and Technology Park (LPNT), a government-sponsored accelerator that encourages commercialization of research and helps start-ups establish themselves, will be opening a branch in Israel in 2016.

The announcement was made last week, at the start of a biomed conference that saw dozens of Polish and Israeli companies present their innovations to hundreds of visitors from both countries. This year, Poland and Israel mark the 25th anniversary of the re-establishment of official political and trade relations, after they were broken off in the wake of the 1967 Six Day War, when then-Communist Poland was in the sphere of Soviet influence.

Currently, trade between the two countries amounts to about $860 million – not a large amount, officials from both countries said at the conference, but a sum that is expected to increase in the coming years.

Helping that trade along will be the presence of LPNT in Tel Aviv. Set to open next February, the group hopes to attract Israeli start-ups that will partner with Polish tech and biomed firms. LPNT will start small – with a budget of NIS 500,000 ($127,000) – and if things go well, the organization intends to grow, providing funding and partnership opportunities for more Israeli firms.

Based in Lublin, Poland, LPNT includes 40 start-ups in areas like biotech, biomed, IT and other sectors, many of which are ready to advance beyond the starting phase, raise capital and expand – with Israeli companies, if possible.

According to Polish government statistics, 2,432 startups are currently active in Poland, most of them concentrated in major cities like Warsaw, Cracow and Poznan. One third of these companies has at least one woman among its partners, the government said, and nearly half of Poland’s startups are primarily oriented toward the export market.

Krzysztof Bartosz, economic counselor for the Polish Embassy in Tel Aviv, has been working for years to encourage a better economic relationship between Israel and Poland.

“Many Israeli companies have chosen to locate in Poland, because of its central location in Europe, low labor costs, and conscientious workforce,” Bartosz told The Times of Israel in a recent interview. “In addition, Israeli firms benefit from the economic benefits accruing to Poland as a result of its membership in the European Union. We have a very highly educated workforce, with many Western-educated engineers who work in areas like information technology, life sciences, and material and nanotechnology.”

Today’s Poland, said Bartosz, is a far cry from the days when it was an economic backwater run by the Communists. “When we bring Israeli business officials here to check out facilities, they are amazed at how modern everything is,” said Bartosz.

For Israelis, the reputation of Poland as a historic hotbed of anti-Semitism still persists.

“I can understand why Israelis would have that view of Poland, but historically it is incorrect – and just plain unfair,” said Bartosz. If Poland was the place where the biggest mass murder of Jews took place during the Holocaust, it’s because that’s where most of the Jews who fell under the Nazi occupation lived, he said. “Obviously it was more convenient for the Nazis to kill the Jews on site than to transport them, so that’s what they did.”

That there were collaborators among the Poles who helped the Nazis cannot be denied, “but we have to remember that there was an important and large resistance that fought the Nazis – and included Jews among their ranks. In addition, many thousands of Poles – only some of whom have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations – helped save Jews. In addition, we mustn’t forget that we Poles were victims as well – three million Poles were killed by the Nazis, too.”

If in the past Poland was a black mark on the Jewish people’s map, today it is a bright spark. “Unlike in many other European cities, you do not find mass anti-Israel demonstrations in Poland,” said Bartosz. “We see Israel as a friend, and we are reaching out in that spirit of friendship to increase ties of all kinds, both cultural and business.”

That’s how Poland’s ambassador to Israel, Jacek Chodorowicz sees it as well. “Israel has been acknowledged as a world leader in the quality of scientific research institutions,” he said. “It has one of the highest numbers of medical device patents per capita in the world, and an impressive record in health care. Poland, on the other hand, has a strong talent pool in the biomed sector, competitive labor costs, and rapidly growing labor productivity.

“Polish biomed small and medium enterprises are seeking out well-established companies with rewarding international partnerships, whereas Israeli entrepreneurs in life sciences are looking for places with highly skilled experts and relatively low facility costs – this is where we meet, where we see exciting synergy between Poland and Israel.”