Trends Talk: Pascale Delcomminette | samedi 11/04/26

·28 min·2 clips

The CEO of Belgium's export agency reveals how companies can navigate a fragmented global landscape to grow.

1. Trends Talk interviews Pascale Delcomminette, CEO of AWEX, the Walloon agency for export and foreign investment attraction, on its new 2026-2029 strategic roadmap. 2. Delcomminette leads AWEX and also WBI (Wallonie-Bruxelles International); the roadmap comes after five years without a full strategic revision and in the context of an unstable international environment. 3. The episode's core question is how AWEX plans to generate more economic impact with constrained budgets and a fragmented geopolitical context. 4. The new roadmap retains AWEX's three missions — export internationalisation, foreign investment attraction, and Wallonia's international visibility — but refocuses 80% of actions on Wallonia's priority sectors and strategic value chains. 5. A maturity diagnosis tool developed over three years assigns export-readiness scores to companies, directing the most promising ones toward intensive, tailored support while steering early-stage companies toward e-commerce or proximity markets. 6. The 2026 action programme contains 158 actions, including 25 new ones; 60% of all actions are subject to post-action surveys both immediately and six months later to evaluate impact. 7. Defence became AWEX's stated priority sector for 2026, with 15 dedicated actions, including dual-use civil-military technologies such as AI, cybersecurity, imagery, and innovative materials. 8. A task force with Walloon Minister Géollet and industrial federation Agoria mapped previously unaware companies into Wallonia's defence value chain cadastre, many of them subcontractors with civil technologies applicable to defence. 9. The first BEDEX defence trade show was described as a strong success, and Delcomminette noted that Wallonia leads Flanders in the defence export sector. 10. Europe is set to unlock approximately 800 billion euros for defence over coming years; AWEX is helping Walloon companies position themselves to access these funds through dedicated trade show missions. 11. Walloon exports grew 12.6% in 2025 after two consecutive down years (2023 and 2024), with US exports up 44% driven by companies anticipating Trump administration tariff implementation. 12. The three-year trend from 2023 to 2025 shows Wallonia at +1.6% cumulative growth, while all neighbouring regions recorded negative trends over the same period. 13. Regarding European funds, AWEX teams embedded in Brussels with the EU General Delegation help companies decode grant calls, prepare for European regulation, and enter Global Gateway consortiums. 14. Delcomminette acknowledges that Flemish companies historically access EU funds more effectively, attributing this partly to their larger average size, but frames it as a challenge AWEX is actively addressing through awareness programmes. 15. AWEX is consolidating from six regional offices to three physical locations, but Delcomminette asserts proximity will be maintained through mobile advisers visiting companies directly rather than through buildings. 16. The agency's diversification message is explicit: Belgium's domestic market is too small for resilience, and diversification into new geographies — including Mexico, which saw double normal company participation on a recent mission — reduces risk and drives innovation. 17. AWEX's 2029 targets include 19 KPIs: 8 impact indicators and 11 performance indicators, with a target return of at least 10 euros of export business for every 1 euro of AWEX investment. 18. The interview is structured as a systematic walkthrough of the roadmap, with the host asking probing questions on implementation, collaboration with other agencies, and structural changes. 19. Best suited to Walloon business leaders, export managers, economic policy observers, and those tracking Belgian trade dynamics. 20. Listeners seeking consumer-facing business stories or those outside the Belgian economic policy context will find the episode too institutionally specific.

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