Polish Incubator Chiefs Visit Region
Wildbeary Products made its international debut Monday.
While owners Billie Milford and Sara Wardrip stirred pots of huckleberry syrup at the Spokane Airport Business Park Kitchen Center, the directors of 13 business incubators in Poland peppered them with questions about their tiny operation.
Where do they get their berries?
How do they distribute their product?
Who does the labeling?
“Your food procesing is very developed,” said Janusz Sulczewski, manager of the incubator in Zary, near the German border.
His community can apply some of the techniques witnessed in Spokane and the group’s other U.S. stops to his own operation, he said.
Just as importantly, tenants in the Zary incubator may be able to establish commercial ties with U.S. counterparts that would benefit both parties, Sulczewski said.
He said Polish authorities are also looking for examples of incubators that are self-sufficient, as the Kitchen Center is.
The delegation is wrapping up a three-week tour of the United States with a three-day stop in the Spokane area. Members will visit with chambers of commerce and other economic development agencies, visit the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, and also take in the Bonner Business Center in Sandpoint, where they will spend Wednesday night.
They have already been in Washington, D.C., New Orleans, and Chicago.
The visit was arranged by Pete Kerwien of Washington Water Power Co., and the delegation sported utility caps and T-shirts with “Best of Poland - Inkubator Przepsiebiorczosci” (Incubator Enterprise) on the front.
Adam Kania said Poland is unique in Central Europe for its widespread use of incubators to start small businesses.
His 40,000-square-foot facility is in Pulawny, a former Russian defense installation southeast of Warsaw that for years did not exist on maps of Poland.
The incubator now has 10 tenants, Kania said, with a projected 40 by year-end.
At Zelow, in central Poland, incubator manager Jan Dawicki said the success stories include two unemployed brothers who have established a recycling business that now employs six.
Their goal is construction of a waste-to-energy plant like that near the Kitchen Center, and a sanitary landfill, he said.
Ewa Drzyzga, manager of the Knurow incubator in southern Poland, said users of her facility do not share kitchen equipment the way they do at the airport center.
They will when she returns, she said.
Drzyzga said Poland has an abundance of wild berries that, if properly processed, could be marketed to wealthy countries like Germany.
“It’s a great idea for employing women,” she added.
Milford and Wardrip were cleaning up as the delegation departed. All the bottles they had placed on display for the delegation were headed for Poland.
If an order were to materialize sometime in the future, Wardrip said, they would know that the stop had been a success, at least from Wildbeary’s standpoint.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo