ICBUILD & SLOBRAZ business conference for greener built environment in Brazil

On November 9, the International Investment Online Business Conference and B2B Talks – for a Greener Built Environment in Brazil were held, prepared by the Chamber of Commerce of Slovenia – Brazil SLOBRAZ and the Construction Cluster of Slovenia (CCS) within the framework of the EU project ICBUILD, the European strategic cluster partnership for internationalization. The event was also supported by SPIRIT Slovenia, the Ministry of economy, tourism and sport. The purpose of the conference was to present green business opportunities in Brazil, resources to support international business, trade and cooperation, successful stories of good practices and make a first invitation to ICBUILD business mission to Brazil, to the FEICOM fair in April 2024 in Sao Paulo. The new Ambassador of Slovenia to Brazil, Mateja Kračun, spoke in her introductory speech about the support for economic cooperation between Slovenia and Brazil. In the protocol part of the event, Štefan Šalej, the founder of the Slovenian Business Global Network, gave a lecture on how to do business in Brazil based on many years of experience in doing business in the country. The co-organizer of the conference, Vladimir Gumilar, director of the Construction Cluster of Slovenia, spoke about the ICBUILD EU project and the mission of the economic delegation to Brazil in April 2024, as well as the circular construction of the portfolio, and presented some Slovenian companies, members of the cluster, interested for Brazilian market: Reusable Technologies, d.o.o., Anteja ECG, INNTE KINETIC, A STAR d.o.o., RIHTER prefabricated construction d.o.o. From the Brazilian side, Beatriz Luz the CEO of Exchange 4change Brazil gave an address, presenting the green transition of Brazil and the perspective of the construction industry, the circular economy and the Brazilian context. Fabiano D’Agostinho, COO of ConexCI Projetos Ltda Brazil, spoke about the sustainable vision for the Brazilian market: where are the opportunities in the construction sector. Franc Matjaž Zupančič from Slovene Dutch Business Platform – SDBP gave a lecture on the topic of projects on sustainable construction solutions from Slovenia. Edo Sternad, representative of the Slovenian company AVITEL d.o.o., presented the Smart Village SUN project – the implementation of advanced global sustainable ambitions and modern concepts of circular construction. The ICBUILD partners, e.g., ELCA cluster (Italy), ECODOMUS cluster (Italy), ARCHENERG cluster (Hungary), and Dudnjer (Serbia) – presented the clusters and some of their members and their circular and sustainable solutions for Brazilian market. Ellington Colombi, ambassador of ICBUILD Brazil, presented the project of building houses from wood and pine plantations in the southern part of Brazil. Dra. Clarissa D. Zomer, CEO of Arquitetando Energia Solar, spoke about her company’s solutions. The event was attended by more than 40 listeners from all over the world.