If you would imagine a city with endless skyscrapers, mixed with traditional shrines and temples in the middle of bustling offices, majestic culinary delights including puffer fish, octopus and savory pancake with bonito flakes, a quintessential district with iconic billboards and a river where residents would jump into whenever their local team wins a major sports league you would be transported right into the heart of Japan, Osaka. Known as the nation’s kitchen, Osaka is also a mega hub for manufacturing, healthcare, green energy and technology innovation and will be hosting Expo 2025.

Manchester welcomed the Mayor of Osaka, Mr Hideyuki Yokoyama in June and through the visit Ishan Dutta and I met Sakuro Ito-san from Osaka City Economic Strategy Bureau and his colleagues and we discussed about the tremendous opportunities that Greater Manchester and Osaka companies can collaborate and share ideas. It formed the genesis to the International Growth Webinar Series featuring Osaka, Japan on August 8^th 2024.

Attended by GM businesses in various sectors including green energy, space tech, brewery, indoor display tech, translation and nanotech, the Osaka team represented Sakuro Ito-san from Osaka City Economic Strategy Bureau, Mitsuo Ueyama-san from Osaka Global Finance One Stop Support Center and Yohei Takeda-san from Osaka Chamber of Commerce & Industry / Osaka Business & Investment Center delivered an insightful and impactful presentation during a captivating 45 minutes talk and engaging 15 minutes Q&A at the end covering three key themes: innovation, collaboration and industry of the futures with a keen eye to build momentum to a successful and engaging Expo 2025 with Greater Manchester through established forum, support organisation and sector-specific working group.

Global Innovation Forum (GIF) fosters global open innovation opportunities between Osaka businesses with 30,000 Osaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry members including 670 core GIF members and overseas start-ups. Concept Demonstration City Osaka supports Japanese and oversea researchers experiment in Osaka.

O-BIC (Osaka Business and Investment Centre) established since 2001 as the one stop support centre for foreign investments into Osaka including matching services for companies.

Global Financial City Osaka was established in December 2021 with focus on supporting overseas financial corporations entering Osaka. The centre provides consultation services, office location inquiries and subsidies for asset management and fintech companies 

Through Battery Working Group at Osaka Research Institute of Industrial Science and Technology established in 2023, Osaka aims to share information and foster collaboration among companies related to battery development and promote the advancement of the battery industry. With quarterly meetings, the organiser is now currently looking forward to inviting Greater Manchester companies to join the community. We look forward to sharing further updates on this exciting ecosystem development between Osaka and Greater Manchester.

Sharing a list of Osaka-based companies who are interested to collaborate with Greater Manchester companies, the webinar concluded with enthusiastic notes from attendees and the Osaka team to build on this momentum and bring collaborations to realization, facilitated by Business Growth Hub along this exciting journey ahead.

To learn more about the exploration and opportunities, please get in touch with our International Growth Advisors: Nicola Anderson, Ishan Dutta and myself. Having lived in Japan in the past five years before moving to Manchester I can even share with you a thing or two about the mystical puffer fish, if you are keen. We look forward to connecting and speaking with you.

About the Arthor

Edy Heng is an International Growth Advisor at Business Growth Hub having lived and worked in Japan for five years prior to coming to Manchester. With 20+ years’ experience at Fortune100, pattern-breaking startups in the US, Singapore, ASEAN, Japan UK and two patents, he will bring you through coherent and strategic views of the world of technology and business with cultural aspects embedded through his experiences in different companies and countries.