TradeMalta attends ETPO Working Group Meeting in Oslo

TradeMalta attended the European Trade Promotion Organisations (ETPO) Working Group meeting in Oslo, Norway between the 9th and 10th of May. Representatives from over 20 European trade promotion organisations (TPOs) attended the conference, during which participants could share their experiences and practices in export and trade promotion.

The hosts, Innovation Norway, opened the conference with a presentation about their services and how they are looking to encourage more Norway-based companies to internationalise their business operations. A second presentation addressed their new digital showroom for green technologies which was created to promote the green and sustainable solutions being developed by companies based in Norway.

Other discussions revolved around the importance of maintaining customer relationship management (CRM) systems, updating the digital marketing services available to companies, the use of metadata and cooperating with TPOs in developing countries.

Representatives from Scottish Enterprise, Enterprise Ireland and the Netherlands Enterprise Industry also explained their current means of supplying information and support to their companies who will be affected by Brexit, which is the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU).

Mr Joe Schembri, TradeMalta’s Chief Officer, delivered a presentation about the relationship between TPOs and their stakeholders. In his presentation, Mr Schembri explained TradeMalta’s set-up and stakeholders, and supplemented the explanation with an academic application of Stakeholder Theory. This theory is about ‘who and what really counts’ amongst stakeholders and holds, inter alia, that TPO managers should manager stakeholder interests strategically and maximise value creation for these stakeholders. The presentation was concluded with several points which include the importance of (1) setting clear criteria and expectations with different stakeholders and (2) increasing knowledge-based advisory services available to foreign offices.

The upcoming ETPO Working Group meeting will be held in Dublin, Ireland in September 2019.