Nopef is a Nordic fund specifically designed to strengthen the international competitiveness of Nordic companies by financing parts of the pre- studies, which help to promote Nordic companies´ internationalization of enterprises and participating in project exports.
Ib Sønnerstad talks about what the trends look like in Scandinavian companies today. Ib summarized the situation with China, China and again China. Right now Scandinavian companies want to establish business in China, no matter if they work within biotechnology or sell flowers.
There are of course other countries as well, but China is now very over-represented among the applications that come to Nopef. In the case of other countries Ib says that Swedish companies also have an interest in Brazil. The companies in the energy and environment industry find Brazil interesting.
Ib is surprised by the weak interest that exist for India, but most surprising is probably the large decrease in applications related to Russia. The interest in establishments on the Russian market declined enormously during 2009.
In 2009, Nopef received over 200 applications. Most of the applications come from Swedish and Danish companies. Danish companies submit as many applications as the Swedish companies, despite a significantly smaller number of companies. We should be thankful that the Danes are ambitious entrepreneurs.
Cecilia Helland