In two cities in south-western Poland, we looked at how local leaders are trying to attract multinational companies, strengthen home-grown businesses and create an environment where people want not only to work, but also to live. As part of an eight-member international group of journalists, we visited Wałbrzych and Wrocław on a study tour organised by the Warsaw Enterprise Institute. From a Mercedes plant and a Polish SME to a technology company that started life in a garage, a surprisingly consistent strategy emerged. Hungarian cities and their leaders might also find ideas worth considering here.
The multi-day programme was supported on behalf of the Warsaw Enterprise Institute by Marta Roels and Łukasz Wojdyga. Both work in strongly international fields: Roels is a WEI project coordinator and analyst, while Wojdyga specialises in international academic and research cooperation.
Our first major economic stop was Wałbrzych. One phrase kept returning during the opening presentations: building an ecosystem. In other words, bringing in a factory is not enough. Everything that enables it to operate successfully over the long term has to be built around it. And the right environment can benefit SMEs just as much as the industrial giants next door.
Poland’s industrial zone is no longer only about gigafactories
The presentation of the Wałbrzych Special Economic Zone – WSEZ “Invest-Park” was opened by Marcin Lerner, president of the company’s management board. Katarzyna Prociak, director responsible for investment acquisition and sales, then gave us a closer look at how the zone operates.
According to the figures presented, nearly 450 investors are active in the zone, with total investment worth around PLN 48 billion. Companies operating there are credited with creating approximately 90,000 jobs.
Some of the best-known names include Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and Electrolux, while Mercedes also operates a plant in nearby Jawor. Yet one message was repeatedly stressed during the presentations: the strategy is no longer focused solely on gigafactories. Polish and foreign small and medium-sized companies are also actively targeted.
Investors can also receive tax incentives. What makes the scheme interesting is that the support is not paid out as one large grant. Instead, an eligible company can gradually use the approved amount when paying tax. The level of support depends, among other things, on the size of the company and the investment itself, with a benefit of up to 25 per cent available in the most favourable cases.
Invest-Park also runs a training centre supporting companies already operating in the region, while InvestUp connects startups with established businesses. The thinking behind both programmes is the same: a factory needs suppliers, skilled workers, research capacity and a new generation of companies around it.
Roman Szełemej talks about an entire city, not isolated projects
At Invest-Park, Roman Szełemej, Mayor of Wałbrzych, introduced us to the city. A cardiologist by profession, he has led Wałbrzych since 2011 and was re-elected in 2024 with 71 per cent of the vote. The impression from his presentation was that residents have largely embraced the direction he has set for the city and that development is being treated as a broader community project.
Perhaps the most striking part of Szełemej’s presentation was that he did not try to sell us one spectacular flagship development. He spoke about housing, transport, healthcare, education and energy supply with the same emphasis as industrial investment.
Wałbrzych, which is celebrating its 600th anniversary, has a population of roughly 100,000. According to the presentation, 66 per cent of its territory is covered by green space and around 750,000 tourists visit annually. One of the city’s priorities is keeping young families there, partly through the construction of new municipal housing.
Szełemej also spoke with particular pride about the expanding role of biomass-based energy. At the same time, Wałbrzych is trying to turn its geography into a competitive advantage: the Czech border is just over 20 kilometres away, while Berlin, Prague and Vienna are all close enough that it makes little sense to view the city’s economic position only in relation to Warsaw.
The city’s concrete investment opportunities were presented by Arkadiusz Grudzień, head of InWałbrzych. The role of the municipal company is essentially to turn broader urban strategy into tangible investment offers.
A large company and an SME: John Cotton and WLV
The afternoon factory visits demonstrated what supporting both large and smaller companies means in practice.
Our first stop was the John Cotton Europe plant. According to Michael Harrington, the group’s managing director, the more than century-old family business now operates in seven countries across three continents and employs around 1,600 people.
Tesco played an important role in bringing the company to Poland, inviting it into Central Europe as a partner. Its next major step will be automation: the company is preparing a new logistics centre where, once a lorry arrives, the movement of goods could eventually be handled entirely by automated systems.
One of the more memorable side topics during the factory visit was pillow replacement. Harrington surprised the group by saying that, from a hygiene perspective, pillows should ideally be replaced every six months. Polish consumers, he said, reportedly keep theirs for around eight and a half years on average. Hungarian households may not necessarily perform much better.
From there, we travelled to the plant of WLV W. Kocoń M. Joński. The Polish SME works with industrial plastics technology, air and gas purification systems, tanks and other specialised industrial solutions.
WLV may be a less recognisable name than Mercedes, but that is precisely why its inclusion in the programme mattered. Poland’s huge number of SMEs collectively provides a major base for employment, production and tax revenues. What is more, some of today’s medium-sized local businesses could become the large Polish manufacturers and brands of the next 10 or 20 years.
After a packed day in Wałbrzych, the programme became somewhat more relaxed: the evening ended with a George Dyer Blues concert at the Vertigo Jazz Club in Wrocław.
The day in Wrocław began with State Secretary Michał Jaros
The following morning, Michał Jaros, state secretary at Poland’s Ministry of Development and Technology, joined us for an informal breakfast. Jaros himself has strong ties to Lower Silesia and, as both a politician and economist, was able to discuss the region from a national economic policy perspective after we had spent the previous day looking at it from factory level.
He currently serves as a state secretary in the Polish government, and our closed-door discussion touched on some of the most important investment issues facing the country.
Wrocław immediately feels like a different world from Wałbrzych. The architectural legacy of the former German city of Breslau remains highly visible, while the modern city around it feels young, energetic and conspicuously international.
Radosław Michalski, director responsible for Wrocław’s city brand, explained this side of the city in more detail. His role is essentially to combine Wrocław’s economic, tourism and cultural strengths into a single, recognisable image.
Alongside him, Magdalena Okulowska, president of the Wrocław Agglomeration Development Agency, or ARAW, presented the investment potential of the wider metropolitan area. ARAW works, among other things, on attracting investors and supporting development projects across the agglomeration.
According to the presentation, one in five Wrocław residents is a foreigner, while around 60,000 foreign students and employees representing more than 120 nationalities live in the city. Wrocław also has 30 international schools and kindergartens.
More than 126,000 students attend 30 higher education institutions, while several hundred research and development units operate across the region. The presence of LG is also worth highlighting, as it has helped create particularly strong business links with South Korea.
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Wrocław wants to persuade more than investors
Quality of life features surprisingly prominently in Wrocław’s economic strategy. Culture, life along the Oder River and, increasingly, gastronomy all form part of the city’s pitch.
In 2026, 28 Wrocław restaurants were included in the Michelin Guide, six more than the previous year. BABA and MOST each received a Michelin star, three restaurants were awarded Bib Gourmand status, while the others were included among Michelin’s recommended establishments.
We had the opportunity to experience this side of the city ourselves. One evening took us to Przystań & Marina, which is among the Wrocław restaurants recommended by the Michelin Guide. Located on an island directly beside the Oder, the restaurant is highlighted by the guide for its Mediterranean-inspired cooking, use of local ingredients and waterside setting.
Our group worked its way through a multi-course tasting menu, which proved unanimously popular among the eight international journalists. After days of presentations and factory visits, it also offered a chance to understand Wrocław’s much-advertised quality of life through something other than investment statistics.
That matters because Wrocław is clearly not simply trying to sell jobs. The city also wants to convince engineers, researchers, managers and their families arriving with new investors that there are reasons to stay for the long term. International schools, cultural institutions, parks and riverside areas, together with an increasingly Michelin-recognised food scene, all form part of the same strategy.
From laboratory to market
At Wrocław Technology Park, or WPT, we saw the idea of a business ecosystem in physical form.
According to the presentation, more than 200 companies operate on the campus and employ over 2,000 people. The eight-building complex provides around 66,000 square metres of offices, laboratories, research infrastructure, production facilities and warehouse space.
We were also shown a pilot production area where companies can test a process on a small scale before potentially building an entire factory around it. This is particularly important for smaller businesses: a startup does not have to invest millions of euros in its own laboratory before it can begin experimenting with a real product.
A garage startup and the future of digital identity
Our final business stop was Identt, which began as a classic garage startup and now develops digital identity solutions for banks, financial companies and other regulated sectors.
One of the system’s jobs is to verify whether the person on the other side of a camera really is who they claim to be. The same technology can also be used in access-control systems: stealing or borrowing somebody else’s entry card is of limited use if the system also identifies the person holding it.
The next major change could come with the European Digital Identity Wallet. Under the concept, users themselves will be able to control exactly which pieces of information they share from their identity documents, driving licence, diploma or other digital credentials, and with whom.
Poland no longer simply wants to be cheaper
After visiting the two cities, we ended up back where Marcin Lerner and Katarzyna Prociak began in Wałbrzych: with the idea of an ecosystem.
Roman Szełemej and Arkadiusz Grudzień are trying to transform a former industrial city into a place where domestic companies such as WLV have a future alongside Mercedes. In Wrocław, Radosław Michalski and Magdalena Okulowska are working with the tools available to an international city: universities, foreign talent, technology infrastructure, culture, multinational companies and startups.
And that may have been the most interesting lesson of the trip. This part of Poland is no longer trying to compete with Western Europe simply by being cheaper. The aim is to build an environment in which the investment of a foreign industrial giant matters just as much as the local small business that may one day grow into Poland’s next major international brand.
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