During the week of March 7th, a delegation from the U.S. visited Sweden in conjunction with Access Seminars held in Västerås and Gothenburg. The delegation was made up of Swedes now living in the U.S. as well as Americans who all have extensive experience from the clean tech industry in the U.S. Their mission was to inform Swedish clean tech companies about business opportunities in the United States. The seminars were entitled “How to do Business in the U.S. Clean Tech Market?”

On March 8th, the delegation was invited by the Östsvenska and Mälardalen’s Chambers of Commerce to the Aros Congress Center in Västerås. The seminar attracted 35 participants. Viveka Wahlstedt, Past Chairman of SACC-USA, was the moderator. She started off saying that the world’s best transmission lights come from Västerås! By asking participants to share their experiences from the U.S., Viveka established an important networking atmosphere during the seminar. Catharina Kronström, representing the American Embassy in Sweden, talked about how the Embassy can assist companies interested in accessing the U.S. market and also highlighted some good examples of collaboration and exchange between the U.S. and Sweden through the Swedish American Green Alliance (SAGA).

Two days later, the program was repeated in Gothenburg as part of the Business Accelerator Program project. This was the second time in a year that SACC invited companies in the Gothenburg area to a seminar focusing on the U.S. clean tech market. Over 40 attendees came to the lovely 1800-century decorated conference rooms at Business Region Göteborg to talk about doing business in the U.S. Per Carlsson, ABioNova, discussed how he has built up his company’s presence in Minnesota and how patience, a clear focus on the goal, and a good network have all been very important. After the conference, several participants took the opportunity to meet with the speakers in one-on-one matchmaking meetings.

The main seminar topics were:
• The importance of having the right business partner in the U.S.
• The checklist – what to have in mind; legal aspects, cultural differences and ways to raise capital.
• The next step – where to set up business, differences in various clean tech industries and geographic regions.

The speakers shared their experience, insight and knowledge about the clean tech market and provided both a broad picture as well as hands-on practical advice for how a Swedish company can succeed in the U.S. and their most important points were:
• Tim Meyer, DirectNU Energy. There is no way to enter the U.S. in a homogeneous way. Set expectations and make sure to find your niche and your match, do your homework, and find unconventional channels and customers like university campuses and the military. Get American advisors who know your new market.
• Lena Malmberg, LM Broking. Prepare your written and printed materials (none of the attending companies interested in export could state that their material is ready for the U.S.).
• Richard Weiner, Fredrikson & Byron P.A. discussed the various forms of partnership including licensees, subsidiary and distributor, and described the advantages and disadvantages of each.
• Marianne Ericsson, Carnegie Worldwide. After giving an overview of where investments and incentives are to be found within different areas of renewable energy, she suggested establishing your business in a ”cold spot” – why be where everyone else is?
• Seth Obetz, Amerigreen, showed not-so-promising statistics over the demand and supply of energy usage but said that the Renewable Portfolio Standard implemented in Pennsylvania promises to decrease the use of energy from non-renewable energy sources.

All presentations from the seminar can be downloaded here.

A Successful Seminar Tour in Sweden!

On March 25th and 26th, SACC-USA arrange in partnership with some Swedish organizations two seminars about how Swedish clean tech companies can access the U.S. market.

As part of the Business Accelerator Program, sponsored by Region Västra Götaland, the first seminar took place in Gothenburg, at the Gothenburg City Museum. Some and 50 attendees representing the West Swedish clean tech industy and other with interest in the field were given the big picture of the vast U.S. market. The goal with this seminar was to give the audience a more holistic view of the U.S. clean tech market; “We wanted to explain the American business culture, how you work with local and state governments, and which states are progressive when it comes to clean energy. Our panelists shared many good examples of how you can approach the various U.S. markets”, says one of the organizers SACC-USA.

The seminar in Gothenburg closed with the panel focusing on the Clean Tech Opportunities in the U.S. the purpose was to give the audience a more hands-on perspective of how to enter the U.S. market. Moderator Ross Harding started up by saying that the Swedish technology is widely known in the U.S. and well approved, but if the Swedes want to take advantage of the change in energy use in the U.S. they have to act fast. Walter Howes, Verdigris Capital, continued by showing where and how in the U.S. investments are made within the industry. The panel ended by three Swedes working with and on the U.S. market in different aspects; Per Wennerberg, Export Coordinator for Ecoex, talked from the Swede’s point of view which ways there are to start exporting to the U.S.; Morgan Ryhman has alrady taken the step over the pond with his company COT – Clean Oil Technology, since one year established in Chicago; and Lars Johansson, Swede who now is living in Seattle, working as angel investor for clean tech companies.

The day after, on March 26th, the U.S. delegation continued to Stockholm, to in partnership with The Swedish Energy Agency, give the same kind of information and experience to the East-coast Swedish audience as well. With some and 70 representatives from the Swedish clean tech industry and other interested, the seminar at Summit Conference on March 26 provided a lot of information about the U.S. clean tech market. Maybe it  also was an alarm clock to speed up the process if the Swedish companies want to jump on the “Green Train” in the U.S. As Ross Harding, Energy Launch Partners, said several times during the seminar “it’s time to speed up the planning of entering the U.S. market with Swedish technology. The window of opportunity could close soon”.

Read more about the Business Accelerator Program at www.sacc-bap.org there you can also find the speakers’ presentations from the Gothenburg seminar.

Maria Strömberg stands on three legs – experientially speaking – as she combines in one person a building engineer, an international development expert and an environmentalist. During the late 1990’s she trained building entrepreneurs in South Africa in how to minimize the environmental impact of building projects, and in the new millennium she began to work with regional economic development for Business Region Göteborg (BRG), which is owned by local governments and municipalities in Gothenburg and 12 surrounding communities.

Last October Maria Strömberg became Head of Business and Environment at BRG, a job that involves both attracting foreign businesses to the region, as well as helping regional companies to expand internationally. “We promote sustainable development in order to develop a diversified economy in an area that was long dominated by the shipbuilding and auto industries,” she says.

BRG’s goal is to diversify the regional economy, and develop a multitude of strong and sustainable industries, creating new jobs that last. The agency is working with about a dozen different areas, including biomedicine, automotive, transportation and logistics, information technology, food production, and renewable petrochemical industries. Maria’s focus is on business-driven environmental development.

“It great to have new laws and regulations pushing for development of more environmentally friendly technology, but in the end it is the desire to make money that gives you the extra boost and can speed up the development,” she says. “One clean tech area we are working a lot with is biogas, where we are developing an entire new business – biogas for cars and trucks. We are working on the entire chain, from production and distribution of biogas to development of new vehicles. Volvo is of course a large player here, primarily in developing trucks that run on biogas.” “Building an infrastructure is essential to get this new system to work, and we are working on it, partially together with several biogas EU-projects.” “We also have a project geared towards increasing the export of clean tech from the western part of Sweden, and here we are working with SACC-USA as a partner,” she says, adding “90 percent of the 350 companies we support are small, with less than ten employees.”

Most of them look at nearby markets such as Scandinavia and Europe, but there is a growing interest in the U.S. market and in the Asian market. “The recession has affected many small entrepreneurs, but there is definitively a great potential here, and we have done several projects targeting the American market. We have for example began cooperation between North Carolina and West Sweden (Västra Götalandsregionen), a region that includes Gothenburg. This project centers on biogas, where there is a large potential in North Carolina as they have a large population of hogs, generating huge amounts of manure that can be turned in to biogas using Swedish technology. Local communities can make money in the process and in addition you remove the environmental problem of methane leakage.” “We have also worked with California, where we recently won the Blue Sky Award for our Biogas West project,” she says.

Barack Obama’s push for alternative energy and clean tech has caught attention among Swedish entrepreneurs, and so did the former ambassador to Sweden, Michael Wood who became an unlikely hero in Sweden by promoting Swedish environmental technology in the U.S. “The election of Obama and the Ambassador’s ‘One Big Thing’ project had a big impact in Sweden, and made more Swedish companies interested in the U.S. market, she says, adding that this has to a degree been stymied by the recession.” “We are working proactively with the environmental export council Ecoex to support Swedish companies that want to export, including those interested in the U.S. market.”

Gothenburg will host the SACC-USA Entrepreneurial Days in early November 2010, which will allow Swedish companies to meet up with American companies and delegations. “We hope to find American clean tech companies interested in establishing here, and we also hope that it will be good for Sweden’s export of environmental technology. Many clean tech companies in western Sweden are eager to meet with American companies, and it is easy for them to do that at Edays in Gothenburg,” Maria says. “Once the first contact has been established, they might get interested in traveling to the U.S. and taking part in SACC-USA’s Business Accelerator Program.” “We will help out spreading the word about both Seattle Business Days/ Edays Seattle Special Edition and the upcoming Edays in Gothenburg.”

Maria Strömberg says that she hopes to be able to entice the visitors to Edays to not only stay at the conference and matchmaking event, but to join the many study tours they are preparing. “We have a lot of very interesting companies and local municipalities that they can visit. This is an area that is very progressive when it comes to sustainability, and renewable energy. With our strong basis in the automotive sector, we have a lot of projects in western Sweden for developing a sustainable transport system,” she says. And distant heat is highly developed in the area. “We use less than one percent non-renewable fuel in our distant heat system.”

Hans Sandberg