Polish-American Economic Summit in Warsaw Generates New Orders for Poland

Sikorsky was involved in the biggest contract announced on Wednesday: a USD350m deal with PZL Mielec aircraft maker. The Polish company will produce cabins, tail cones and pylons for Black Hawk helicopters.

It is PZL Mielec's biggest contract at the moment and the Polish company will provide one half of the cabins from Sikorsky's new order, the rest being produced in the US. Meanwhile, Boeing announced it would open a new research and development centre in Warsaw. There, it will explore ways of saving on fuel at take-off and landing with simultaneous reduction in noise. It will be Boeing's first significant research operation in Poland. Westinghouse signed a letter of intent with Energomontaz Polnoc Gdynia to see if the latter can produce subassemblies for modules used in construction of nuclear power stations.

Although the Polish-US economic summit held on Wednesday was devoted to various issues, the talks were dominated by one topic: energy. Apart from representatives of US and of Polish firms, US Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank and her deputy were among the participants of the conference. The focus was on shale gas, but also on nuclear power, conventional power stations and renewable energy sources, mainly because American firms are interested in tenders for power stations.

Polish Deputy PM Waldemar Pawlak pointed out that even though trade between Poland and the US had been growing over the past years, it was still far from the potential of both economies. He also stressed that relations between the two countries had improved immensely in the past two decades.