Fanny Bervard, founder of Romantico Romantico Studios, will be in Dubai to showcase a special capsule jewellery collection under her Made in Luxembourg label. Photo: Romain Gamba/Maison Moderne

Fanny Bervard, founder of Romantico Romantico Studios, will be in Dubai to showcase a special capsule jewellery collection under her Made in Luxembourg label. Photo: Romain Gamba/Maison Moderne

Five Luxembourg-based professionals tell Delano why they’re looking forward to attending the Expo 2020 in Dubai. 

New collection

Fanny Bervard, founder of Romantico Romantico Studios, is looking forward to visiting the Luxembourg pavilion in November. Not only will she be formally representing the Made in Luxembourg jewellery brand there, but “we’ll launch a capsule collection, targeted to women in the UAE, and have a pop-up shop there, after exhibiting,” she tells Delano. While the pop-up details are still in the works, locals can check out her designs and even schedule a showroom visit via her .

Iconic projects

The Luxembourg pavilion structure includes 170 tonnes of hot rolled steel sections from Belval and Differdange. According to ArcelorMittal Luxembourg, these were produced from 100% recycled scrap as raw material, and the pavilion concept allows for circular economy principles, i.e., in the disassembling and later reassembling of the material.  But perhaps lesser known is the fact that ArcelorMittal steel is incorporated into several buildings there. For example, its beams are in the Al Wasl tower, while its sheetpiles helped to build the  Palm Jumeirah.

“The Middle East is an important market for the steel solutions we produce in Luxembourg. Heavy beams and sheet piles are integrated into iconic projects there, including the Burj Khalifa,” managing director and vice-chairman of ArcelorMittal Luxembourg Roland Bastian tells Delano. And the Expo 2020 Dubai will be just another opportunity to showcase the company’s innovative know-how.

Space opportunities

“The UAE is a space-emerging country. Its government is investing a lot in pushing their space programme, subcontracting a lot of expertise to foreign entities,” Redwire Europe general manager Jaroslaw Jaworski tells Delano. He sees the country as one of interest and opportunity.

In fact, a mission dedicated to the space sector is being organised for 24-30 October, to coincide with the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which in the past has attracted around 6,000 visitors.

Game-changing opportunities

SolarCleano is a company producing robotics--to help clean solar panels, among others. A company spokesperson says the vast majority of the company’s business is, in fact, outside of Luxembourg. 

For CEO Christophe Timmermans, he sees the expo as providing the company even more visibility.  “We plan to welcome decision makers from around the world and showcase our robots in the Luxembourg pavilion but also during solar dedicated side fairs occurring during the Dubai 2020 Expo period,” he says. We will also announce new solutions dedicated to very large plants deployed in desertic area, aiming at becoming a real game changer thanks to the use of AI to further improve solar panel predictive maintenance.” 

The CEO praises Luxembourg’s commitment to innovation as well, adding that the company will soon start rapidly scaling up and “enlarging our scope to autonomous outdoor AGVs for search and rescue, agriculture, mining and other outdoor applications which require very accurate positioning. Dubai 2020 shall also feed us with up-coming global challenges that could be tackled with accurate and safe robots.”

Networking

Vanessa Engel, head of non-European private banking clients at Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (BIL), is among many in the banking and finance sector who will be attending the expo over the course of its six-month duration. In her case, it’s the networking she envisions as being the most beneficial. 

The Expo “provides a great opportunity to strengthen our links with local business partners and to meet clients and prospects,” she says.   

An alternate version of this article appeared in the