Prague, 08/05/2009 (Agence Europe) - “The ITER project battle will be fought out in the industrial sub-contracting sector,” opines Philippe Correa, Head of Procurement at Fusion for Energy (F4E). Based in Barcelona, this European agency was set up by the Commission to fulfil its commitment within the framework of the international thermonuclear reactor project, ITER (the EU is taking part in the project alongside China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States), namely 85% of the construction of the reactor itself. The agency is responsible for the purchase of the most complex and most strategic components of the planned reactor, and also of materials for the buildings and preparation of the site at Cadarache in south west France.
At the two-day Research Connections conference in Prague to bring together research players from the east and west of Europe, Correa presented the ITER project and encouraged Czech industrialists, among others, to respond to the calls for tender published on the F4E web site. “ITER is an opportunity for many European companies, and not just the big groups from the big member states. We would like to see more Czech SMEs (small and medium-sized businesses) among the contractors, assuming they have the skills required,” he told industrialists. Some showed concern over the level of technical expertise required to meet the eligibility criteria of the public calls for tender, the often strict rules of which are set by the Commission. “Our technical requirements remain open, a far as possible, to encourage industrial creativity and innovation,” Correa said, adding that “SMEs are facing lots of problems with the current crisis and mustn't be taken put of play”. Within the context of the Small Business Act, “the agency has been trying for six months to make itself more visible to SMEs who often have advanced engineering, precision mechanics and design skills that no one is aware of,” the agency's economic analyst Benjamin Perier told EUROPE. If SMEs want to offer their services as sub-contractors, they can, for example, consult the list of the project's major industrial partners (the main contractors selected for the final phase of a call for tenders), now available on the agency's web site. Industrial liaison officers are also there to assist companies. ITER is, then, both indirectly (through sub-contracts) and directly (through, for example, calls for tender) of relevance to SMEs, since the agency has set itself the rule of inviting at least one third SMEs for tenders of under €250,000. “Our annual budget of €400 million is difficult to divide into calls for tender small enough to be adapted to SME finances,” Perier acknowledged. In 2009, 70 contracts of under €250,000 have been signed by, especially Spanish and French, SMEs. Against the backdrop of the economic crisis, access to public contracts is a godsend for SMEs. “For sub-contracting companies which have lost contracts with the car industry, it is the chance to diversify and maintain an appropriate turnover,” he said. This is all the more so since there is a real “intellectual added value” for these companies in working on an experimental project such as nuclear fusion. “We have an intellectual property sharing policy which ensures that our partners retain their intellectual property rights for 10 years,” Perier said. The industrial opportunities created by the ITER project would be a fine example of the multiplier effect - vaunted by US economist Jeremy Rifkin on Thursday 7 May at the opening of the conference in Prague - which R&D can have on the rest of the economy. All information relating to call for tender and call for proposal procedures are available on the agency site: http://www.fusionenergy.europa.eu (Y.P./transl.rt)