Cluster management report for the period from March 1, 2018 to March 1, 2024

March 1, 2018 – April 2019

Two cluster managers surveyed the markets of the cluster members in three relations: Mongolian, Kazakh, Western Chinese, we participated in the annual foreign attachés' meeting, contacted our embassies abroad, surveyed market research companies and began discussing market research criteria.

We ourselves conducted market research and wrote materials about the specialties of each country in terms of paid higher education courses and wine export. The eu-xperience website was completed, which was also interested in introducing the Hungarian scholarship Stipendium Hungaricum, in order to create a channel for paid courses in Hungary.

Our 1st trip abroad, based on market research:

April 25, 2019 – May 01, Chongqing, China - ITM Ministry of Business Delegation to support higher education cooperation - organized by the Hungarian Consulate General in Chongqing, which had no other costs, only the travel and accommodation costs agreed in the sponsorship agreement. 14 Chinese universities learned about our EU-Xperience activities, there was specific interest in jointly launching hunting training and winemaking training with the University of Kaposvár. Together with the University of Science of Pécs - we prepared a delegation of Chinese university leaders for March 2020, where contracts would have been signed. It failed or stopped due to COVID.

The market research study was completed in English during the summer of 2019, parts of which can be found in Hungarian on the website. After translating the 1000-page study, we published several smaller studies on our website:

Available professional materials:
 
01. Specifics of food exports to China (mainly beverages)
02. Main priorities of Chinese higher education institutions for studying abroad, Hungarian opportunities
03. Mongolian and Kazakh specialties, what higher education majors and training may be suitable for them
04. Successful Hungarian exporters in Kazakhstan, Mongolia and China since 2000
05. How to develop an effective marketing mix and successful online sales strategy for the Chinese, Mongolian and Kazakh markets?
06. Specialties of Chinese business and what to look for when concluding a contract?
07. How to choose a Chinese agent to represent our products?
08. What to do if the Chinese partner does not pay?
09. Ideas for financing our Chinese businesses
10. Effective negotiation techniques with Chinese clients
11. Doing business in China's special economic zones
12. Specialties of Chinese export customs clearance
13. Characteristics of the Mongolian market, characteristics of the Kazakh market, trends for 2020
14. Specialties of Western China regarding Hungarian business opportunities
15. Sales opportunities for higher education courses in Mongolia and Kazakhstan for 2020
16. How can we do business with a Chinese municipality?
17. Hungarian wine opportunities in the Philippines
18. Sales opportunities for higher education courses in Asian countries for 2021
19. The role of foreign students in export sales
20. Student recruitment with online marketing
21. How to set up a wechat shop?

At the recommendation of the economic attaché in Nur-Sultan, we received two Kazakh education organizers and organized their visits to 5 Hungarian universities: Pécs, Gödöllői, Széchényi, Óbudai, Kodolányi We sent information to the universities for 2 years about which majors would be popular in Kazakhstan.

2. foreign trip: this opportunity was offered to us by the Mongolian Ambassador in Budapest and we got in touch with the Mongolian Ministry of Education, who officially visited us in January 2020.

October 13-17, 2019 Ulan Bator - We participated in the education exhibition organized by the Mongolian Ministry of Education for free and represented five Hungarian universities, presenting more than 100 English-language courses. We interviewed 120 Mongolian students who were potential applicants for the following year's courses. We competed with China, which exhibited in the next hall. The courses could have been worth nearly 3 million euros, depending on the interest of the Mongolian students. The program, photo documentation and interviews with Mongolian students about the trip are available on the application interface. The first secretary of the Hungarian embassy at the time, later Mongolian ambassador Dr. Borbála Obrusánszky, actively assisted in the trip. The plans failed due to COVID.

Since the summer of 2019, we have been preparing two wine delegations for the Hong Kong Wine and Spirit exhibition, which would have been treated as a special delegation by the HKDTC organization. /Hong Kong-funded trade organization/ However, in the fall of 2019, there were riots in Hong Kong, so the Hungarian consulate did not recommend the trip for security reasons. The exhibition was held, but 14 of the delegation canceled their trip.

November 4-11, 2019. Hong Kong - A representative of the Pannonhalma Abbey Winery participated in the Wine and Spirit exhibition, one person took the risk, participating in the most significant wine exhibition in Hong Kong, otherwise the world's largest. In January 2020, he reported on the experiences of the exhibition and world trends at our benchmarking event. More than 20 representatives of wineries and a representative of the Ministry of Agriculture participated in the first application cluster event. After the event, all interested wine cluster members received: How to export wine to China, which we compiled from: market research materials and experiences gained at the exhibition.

During the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, we planned to close the application by December 31, 2020, but in June 2020 it became clear that a second and even third wave was coming. Because of this, neither events nor travel were feasible, leaving the online space.

From December 2020, with the help of a Brazilian intern, we had the opportunity to conduct on-site market research in Brazil, taking advantage of this to make recommendations for entering the Brazilian market. We later employed the intern as an employee between May and November 2021. He organized events related to EU-xperience. He also visited Hungarian economic attaches abroad, as well as business meetings organized in connection with 10 foreign universities and two important projects for cluster members. During Covid, we considered this a good solution for the sake of the project - since as a Brazilian citizen, he traveled and organized his trip more easily. This led to our joint online event with the BKIK in 2021, Let's Get Closer to Brazil, in which nearly 100 Hungarian SMEs participated or watched the recording. We paid for his flight ticket and the accommodation costs when he traveled to the Hungarian embassy for negotiations, and he paid for his other expenses himself in the hope that he could work with us for the sake of the project. We paid his salary for almost a year and he worked for us as a cluster manager.

Together with BKIK, we looked for companies that would not even dare to think about positioning their products for the Brazilian market. We financed all of this ourselves.

Foreign travel during COVID:

October 2021 Tashkent - We attended the business conference of the Turkic Council in Budapest, where we were invited by one of the leaders of the Uzbek Chamber of Commerce, they organized our program, they accompanied us to companies, universities, they told us the date. We had to book the flight and accommodation according to them. COVID measures allowed for flexible accounting of this trip, according to our understanding.

End of October 2021 Nursultan - We participated in the delegation of the Ministry of Finance, gave a presentation on the activities of our cluster, we received the invoice after the closing of the settlement period, we received a statement from them about this. There were indeed no 3 offers for the plane here, because we traveled with the ministerial plane, businessmen, and the program was also official. COVID measures allowed for flexible settlement of this trip, according to our interpretation.

We planned further trips abroad for the spring of 2022, because in the meantime the opportunity to travel to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia opened up. It was only possible to travel to China from the summer of 22 without a two-week quarantine. In November 2021, they refused to move the last stage of the application to March 22, so we had to send one of our employees.

We settled the application by December 31, 2021, but our application writer contracted COVID-19 and our documents were finally uploaded to the platform only on February 15.

Events organized within the framework of the competition:
  • January 2020 wine benchmarking
  • March 2020 chamber cancelled
  • September 2020 outdoor EU-x
  • September 2021 outdoor EU-x

Meanwhile, in 2020 and 2021, we participated in the conferences of foreign trade attaches and sent recommendations to our cluster members on which markets they could target with their products.

Overall, since December 2021, we have been maintaining the cluster management from our own resources with the uncertainty that the settlement of our application was rejected. We wanted to extend the content work described above to Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. In 2021, we invested many working hours in the preparation, and we planned the foreign trips for the beginning of 22. Other relations also arose: we started the work with the foreign trade attaches of Brazil, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Iran, Turkey, Philippines and Pakistan so that foreign students studying here would take a role /in professional internships/ in the online communication of Hungarian companies that want to export.

We hoped to continue the work we started in 2023, but we had to close the EU-xperience project due to the reorganization of universities. The only higher education institution left in the cluster was the Oenological Research Institute of the University of Pécs.

From 2023, the cluster management tasks included:
  • presenting potential applications and export opportunities to cluster members
  • coordinate if a cluster member wants to take out a preferential business loan
  • transmit requests sent by HEPA and foreign trade attaches to cluster members: there were requests for business projects from Bosnia, China, Nigeria, Czech, Croatia, Uzbekistan, Taiwan in 2023 and 2024

The goal remains to coordinate the export activities of wineries. To this end, we have developed our material entitled Project for the Implementation of the Hungarian Wine Strategy, which is available on the website.

We were approached with the following projects by our attaches working abroad and our network of contacts familiar with the cluster:
  • operating an oil refinery in Nigeria with Hungarian experts
  • organizing garbage collection in Abuja
  • Bioblood promotion event in Tashkent
  • revitalizing Kazakh saline areas by planting reeds
  • creating a WeChat shop for wineries in Eger
  • NFC wines in Budapest tourism
  • developing a robot sommelier

Márta Sárkány, Cluster Manager
Eger, March 1, 2024