Nevada welcomes Polish trade delegation

By Megan Messerly

Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2015 | 9:04 a.m.

As rumors about Chinese-backed electric car maker Faraday Future swirl, the state of Nevada is turning its attention to another country — Poland.

Polish businesspeople and officials gathered in Las Vegas on Monday for the start of a five-day trade mission in Nevada. Talks regarding the economic ties between Poland and Nevada have been ongoing for several years, but have taken fuller form since Gov. Brian Sandoval visited the country during a trade mission to Europe earlier this summer.

This week, members of the Polish delegation will network with local companies in Las Vegas and Reno, tour data storage center Switch and celebrate the opening of a Polish business accelerator at the Reno Innovation Center at the University of Nevada, Reno — which Sandoval had pledged to do in the memorandum of understanding he signed with the province of Lubelski.

“This really shows how deeply engaged the state government is,” said Pawel Pietrasienski, the head of the trade and investment section of the Polish Embassy in Washington, D.C.

At the conference, Kris Sanchez, director of international trade in the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, highlighted Sandoval’s focus on international trade, saying that the governor has been on 11 trade missions to 10 countries since he took office and plans to add at least another five. “He’s the first governor in our state’s history to be so aggressive internationally,” Sanchez told the Polish delegation.

The state of Nevada has prioritized Poland in those efforts. The state received a grant earlier this year through the U.S. Small Business Administration to fund programs in with Poland — as well as China. Money from the grant will go to fund a trade mission to China in March and to

Poland in May.

Poland and Nevada may seem unusual bedfellows, but John Petkus, the honorary consul of Poland in Las Vegas said they have the potential to be great economic partners. Petkus’ office has been working to promote trade between Nevada and Poland over the last couple of years. Petkus said he would like to see 50 Polish companies in the North and 25 in the South, with anywhere from 25 to 100 employees each. The focus is to attract a larger number of small- and medium-sized businesses.

Petkus thinks Nevada can be a gateway to the rest of the United States: Reno offers access to Silicon Valley and the technology sector, while Las Vegas opens up markets in Southern California and the entertainment industry. Similarly, he said that Poland offers Nevada companies access to the rest of the European Union with its “business-friendly economy” and a set of EU development funds that allows the country do “the same things that the state does for Tesla or Faraday Future.”

The main problem, Petkus said, is marketing — getting the word out about Nevada to Polish people and vice versa. “If you asked anybody to point out Poland on a map, I can guarantee one or two out of a hundred would be able to do it,” Petkus said. “Poles know New York, Chicago and California. A lot of people thought Las Vegas was in California.”

Petkus and the Polish American Chamber of Commerce of Nevada convinced one of those businesses — a Polish electronics company called Matrix Technology — late this summer to set up offices and a manufacturing plant in Las Vegas rather than Chicago. “They’re a Polish company that’s moving to Nevada,” Petkus said. “We try to say ‘Nevada’ as much as we can.”