Mr Simon Chen, Executive Director of the Taiwan Hand Tool Manufacturers’ Association (THTMA), spent several days in Poland last week — becoming the first representative of a Taiwanese industry body to participate in the Three Seas Business Congress. The visit covered Warsaw and Lublin and included a set of meetings that ranged well beyond hand tools into the wider question of what Taiwan and Central Europe can build together.

Warsaw: Quantum Technology Meets Industrial Precision

On Tuesday, Chen visited the Centre for New Technologies at the University of Warsaw (CeNT UW) and its Quantum Technology Laboratory. He met with Prof. Konrad Banaszek, one of Europe’s leading researchers in quantum optics, quantum encryption, and quantum computing, and with Dr. hab. Michal Parniak, known for developing what was at the time the world’s fastest quantum memory and for his ongoing work on advanced quantum sensor systems.

For a delegation primarily focused on manufacturing and hand tools, a stop at a quantum computing laboratory might look like a detour. It reflected a deliberate choice. 8Foundry Alliance operates on the premise that Polish deep-tech expertise and Taiwanese manufacturing precision occupy separate worlds that have more to learn from each other than currently expects. CeNT UW is one of the strongest concentrations of quantum research in Central Europe — for a country with serious ambitions in quantum-secured communications and precision manufacturing, that is a fact worth knowing.

Lublin: Where Central Europe’s Next Trade Routes Converge

From Warsaw, Chen travelled to the 3Seas Local Government Congress and Economic Forum in Lublin. Over several days he held meetings with entrepreneurs and companies from the Lublin region, covering a wider range of sectors than most delegations encounter in a single visit: robotics, medical technology, cybersecurity, hand tool distribution, and food production. The breadth was deliberate. Chen came to understand the region, not to pitch into a single sector.

He also met with the Board of the Marshal’s Office of Lublin Province — a conversation that placed the visit in its political and economic context. Regional administration in Lublin Province has shown consistent interest in attracting international industrial partnerships. INFAR Limited, an 8Foundry Alliance cluster member, participated alongside Chen throughout the Congress.

Taichung Meets Via Carpathia

The strategic pairing of Taiwan and the Lublin region has its own internal logic. THTMA represents a manufacturing base concentrated in and around Taichung — a city that accounts for approximately 70% of Taiwan’s hand tool output and has reliably supplied global markets for decades. Precision machining, vertical supply chains, and process knowledge accumulated across generations: these define what Taichung produces and why THTMA’s reach extends far beyond Taiwan’s domestic market.

The Lublin region operates at a different scale, but on a trajectory that is harder to ignore with each passing year. It sits at the intersection of the Via Carpathia transport corridor — the north-south spine connecting the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic — and serves as Poland’s most direct land gateway to Ukraine. When large-scale reconstruction of Ukrainian infrastructure begins in earnest, geographic proximity will be one of the scarcest and most commercially significant assets in the region. Lublin has it, along with the industrial base to do something with it.

Blue Ocean in Practice: How 8Foundry Alliance Builds the Channel

This visit didn’t start in Lublin. It started earlier — with an initial meeting between 8Foundry Alliance and THTMA that opened a conversation between two markets with no prior channel to each other. Chen’s trip to Poland is what happens when that first conversation leads somewhere real: a delegation, a concrete programme of meetings, and a relationship that has moved from exploratory to operational.

At 8Foundry Alliance, we call this Blue Ocean — not as a label but as a working method. We look for markets that complement each other but haven’t yet found each other. We map the connections, make the introductions, and step back once both sides start talking specifics. The Taiwan-Central Europe channel is a clear case: a manufacturing ecosystem in Taichung that supplies the world, and a Lublin region heading toward one of the most strategically significant positions in this part of the continent — with very few people on either side knowing the other existed as a potential business partner.

The meetings in Warsaw and Lublin were concrete and bilateral. Companies from the Lublin region sat across the table from one of the most concentrated manufacturing ecosystems on the planet. The Marshal’s Office was in the room. THTMA left with a clearer picture of where Central Europe is heading. We are continuing to build this channel. Chen’s visit is a step in that process — not a conclusion.