This Fall: Two Trade Missions to Three Central European Countries, Escorted by Consuls 

Plans are coming together for at least two trade missions to three countries in Central Europe this fall, giving Georgia companies and communities an inside track on business development in the region. 

John Parkerson, an Atlanta attorney and honorary consul for Hungary in Georgia, is teaming up with his counterpart for Slovakia, John Woodward, for a September mission that will span both countries. The Czech Republic’s honorary consul, Monika Vintrlikova, is taking a group of five Georgia firms to the southern part of the country in October. 

In September, P&S International Strategies, a consultancy in which Mr. Parkerson is a partner, and Mr. Woodward, the former Metro Atlanta Chamber global commerce vice president turned market-entry consultant, will team up to take companies to four cities on what’s being billed as Central Europe Connect Sept. 13-20. 

The itinerary includes both countries’ capitals: Budapest, Hungary, and Bratislava, Slovakia, as well as second city of each — Debrecen, a Hungarian hub for automotive and aerospace sectors, and Košice, a rising IT, engineering and innovation center in Slovakia. 

Plans call for direct meetings with companies in food tech, advanced manufacturing, medtech, space and more, along with meetings with government officials and leaders of key innovation clusters. In Košice, participants will attend the Slovakia Tech Forum & Expo.

Laying the groundwork for his side of the trip, Mr. Woodward returned in June from a trip to both Slovak cities, where he met up with the country’s other honorary consuls from around the world. 

Mr. Parkerson, meanwhile, has represented Hungary in Georgia for nearly two decades and has presided over many trade missions in both directions, while helping companies from the region set up their entities in Georgia. 

“The consulate’s past missions to Hungary dating back more than a decade have proven the utility to companies, economic development organizations and higher education/research institutions of building meaningful person-to-person business relationships in the Central European region,” Mr. Parkerson told Global Atlanta. “Our previous highly successful joint mission to Hungary and the Czech Republic in 2023 has proven the value to all parties of the kinds of partnerships trade missions like these foster.”

Learn more and sign up for the mission here or by contacting Melinda Setenyi. 

The Czech Red Carpet Treatment

A few weeks after the Hungary-Slovakia, Czech Republic Honorary Consul Monika Vintrlikova will lead a group of Georgia companies to her native country for one of Central Europe’s largest trade fairs, the MSV Industrial Engineering Fair held in Brno. The event each year boasts 1,500 exhibitors and 55,000 attendees from more than 40 countries.

The second-largest Czech city has been building bridges with Georgia since Ms. Vintrlikova, who hails from a town nearby, took up the honorary consul post five years ago. 

She brought a group of communities, companies and academics to the fair in 2024, which the City of Roswell has said was integral to building its ties with PBS Aerospace, the Czech manufacturer of engines that pledged a $20 million in investment in the north-metro city and is ramping up to mass production for missile and drone engine assembly. 

But now she is collaborating with the trade fair company, the Brno Regional Chamber of Commerce and other stakeholders to create not only a dedicated tradeshow booth for Georgia companies at the event, but also an itinerary that will include one-on-one meetings with Czech companies and top government officials. 

“She is such a big engine for increasing the relations between Czechs and the U.S.,” Jan Kubata, general director of BVV Trade Fairs Brno, said of Ms. Vintrlikova during a recent interview with Global Atlanta in Brno. 

In June, the honorary consul helped arrange a variety of meetings for Curiosity Lab at Peachtree Corners during the recent Urbis smart-cities show in Brno, where City Manager Brian Johnson joined a panel with the Czech Minister of Transport Martin Kupka. 

Mr. Kubata said he has sought to bridge U.S. innovation with Czech manufacturing knowhow since he headed up the CzechTrade office in Chicago for eight years. As he predicted then, trade shows are kicking back into full gear in the post-COVID era, he said. 

“But there is a one big difference: You have to bring some new agenda to the companies and to the visitors, to pursue them, to convince them that it’s very important to be at this place during this specific show. And that’s what we have to do,” he said. 

For that reason, he has been asking American companies, which have traditionally been underrepresented at the MSV show, to come and make deals. In visits with the governors of Texas, Louisiana and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, he has pitched MSV a bridge to Central Europe, citing the attendance of B2B decision-makers from across the region and around the world. Target industries include digitization, robotics, cybersecurity, 3D technologies, energy, advanced manufacturing, and transportation.

“I want to have more American companies here than we have Chinese,” he told Global Atlanta. 

Brno, he added, is an innovation hub in its own right, with about 50,000 college students to supplement its half-million population, lending it both a youthful energy and an ample labor force for foreign investors and innovators. 

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The honorary consulate of the Czech Republic is working with The Shared World, the consultancy of former City of Atlanta International Affairs Director Vanessa Ibarra, to recruit and engage companies interested in joining the mission. Learn more about participating here