The Potential of Polish-British Economic Cooperation is a report commissioned by the BPCC and prepared by market intelligence agency Business Intel. The report, analysing of the current state and future outlook of economic relations between Poland and the UK, highlights the growth of bilateral trade, up by 35% over the past five years, reaching new record levels despite Brexit. The document serves as a key information source for entrepreneurs and investors interested in Polish-British cooperation, identifying areas with the greatest growth potential. The report’s recommendations are aimed at making Poland more competitive in Europe through the development of trade and investment relations with the UK.
The report was launched at the Polish press agency, PAP, on 26 February 2025, to an audience of journalists and BPCC members. After the BPCC’s managing director Marcin Cichy summed up the bilateral economic relationship, a panel consisting of representatives of business and academia discussed the most important issues, suggesting what steps could be taken to further boost trade and investment both ways.
Prof Witold Orłowski, PwC’s chief economic advisor, set the macroeconomic scene, pointing out Poland’s rapid progress towards catching up with the UK in terms of GDP per capita, especially at purchasing-power parity. “Twenty years ago, it was about Polish graduates going to wash dishes to UK. Now it’s about Polish capital acquiring UK businesses,” he said. Last year’s acquisition of Thomas Cook by eSky augurs well for the future – Polish investments in the UK are still modest but are growing. “Poland remains a relatively poor economy compared to Western Europe, and although that distance is shrinking fast, the UK will remain the stronger side for decades to come. Our relations should become more balanced, not just based on capital flows one way, but on more cooperation, on more exchange of know-how in both directions”, he said. “What we currently see is encouraging; we’ve only just realised that Poland’s becoming a large and significant economy, but with problems it still needs to work on.” Defence is an interesting sector, he said. “We spend a lot – 4.7% of GDP – but on its own, our industry isn’t able to make the most of the billions of euro earmarked for the sector. It looks likely to be sustained at this level over the next ten years or so, and UK firms are obvious partners.
Prof Eliza Przeździecka from the SGH Warsaw School of Economics said that trading relations between the two countries are improving post-Brexit, with businesses and consumers finding themselves in the new reality sooner than expected. She focused on trade, saying that the goods exported to the UK represent ever-higher value added, pointing to the electronics sector, with components contracted for OEMs’ supply chains as an example. Prof Przeździecka characterised the UK as an absorbent market with high consumption. Trade in services, she said, is very important – its value is half that of trade in goods, and based to a large extent on knowledge-based services, ICT, Polish software engineers and financial services. For Polish firms, investment in the UK can be seen as an alternative to trade. As transport is getting more expensive post-Brexit, a new strategy is developing: to set up production lines in the UK, and offer the produced consuming goods to local market.
Wojciech Skrudlik, GSK Poland Global Hub Lead, highlighted the development potential GSK, a global biopharmaceutical company headquartered in the UK, sees in the Polish market, as evidenced by the scale of its investments and the continuous expansion of its Polish branch. “During its nearly 50-year presence here, GSK has invested over 2 billion zlotys. Over this period, the scope of the company’s activities has also evolved. Currently, GSK Poland employs over 2,500 professionals in fields such as R&D, IT, finance, procurement, HR processes, supply-chain management and marketing and sales,” he said. Mr Skrudlik, like his predecessors, acknowledged that the tasks entrusted to the Polish branch of GSK are becoming more advanced (knowledge-intensive and less based on simple transactions) and are an integral part of global processes. The development of GSK Poland has allowed for better utilisation of local talents and resources, translating into increased innovation and efficiency in the company’s global operations. Repetitive processes are outsourced to external partners, enabling the business to focus on advanced and specialised processes combined with business partnerships. A GSK representative also referred to a report by the Polish Investment and Trade Agency, which presented a map of Poland with R&D centres in 2010 showing only a few logos, compared to the current version filled with logos of foreign investors. This demonstrates that many foreign investors, including large multinational organisations, have appreciated the intellectual potential and quality of services provided in Poland, deciding to invest in the country, which attests to its further investment potential.
Barbara Kończewska, export manager at Atlas building materials, said that the past four years with Covid, Brexit and the inflation that followed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine were tough. Yet for Atlas, “the UK has been a success story, as it is one of its most important, if the not the most important markets.” Since 2008, it has been driven at first by Polish builders who wanted products they knew. The firm saw fourfold growth in the UK last year, she said. Challenges faced in the UK include compliance, and regulatory instability – Ireland, she said, was more stable in this regard. “Having long exported to New Zealand and Canada, we knew how to cope with the third-country documentation required once the UK left the single European market; our clients, however, would have to deal with higher costs and more paperwork. However, many of our smaller competitors have fallen out of the UK market, leaving more room for us.”
Marcin Cichy mentioned the BPCC’s Program Expander, which together with the J. Dauman Group, supports Polish SMEs with audits to help them expand successfully into the market. He went on to ask the panellists to identify the choke-points that need to be tackled to help make Poland more attractive to UK investors.
The consensus was that Poland’s public administration needs to improve; the government’s current deregulation initiative was lauded by the panellists as a significant step forward. Prof Przeździecka pointed out that above all a highly qualified workforce is the most important factor when it comes to attracting foreign investors. “We will never become an attractive investment location because of our lower labour costs. We have to take care of our most important asset and constantly improve the quality and qualifications of our workforce, in both manufacturing and services.” She also mentioned a stable currency – “we are vulnerable to currency fluctuations, being outside the Eurozone.”
Prof Orłowski added to the human capital point. “Whatever qualifications you have, in three years’ time they may have become redundant. Knowledge and flexibility are key. We’re proud of our shared-shared centres, but AI could replace many of the functions they currently carry out. We have to be aware of where we are now and what may happen in future. We’ve stopped being a low-cost labour market; the explosion of off-shoring centres depends on the quality of human capital. We need better universities. They decide which way investment flows. Deregulation should be aimed at improving the knowledge concentrated in human capital. And of course brand! Atlas, for example, is a symbol of a good glue. Even should production someday be moved to Vietnam or elsewhere, it must still remain a Polish brand,” he said. “Polish firms should be partners – not subcontractors – for UK firms; they should be on an equal footing. Former premier Mateusz Morawiecki’s diagnosis, that either Poland ups its game or remains a cheap subcontractor, remains correct. There is still a huge economic transformation ahead of Poland over the next 30 years. The past 20 years have been a great success based on what was lying around and just needed picking up. We exploited that well. But the big jump is ahead.”
Ms Kończewska said that Atlas currently manufactures in Poland and in Rumania, and plans to do so in the UK too. “We have moved on from selling building products to Polish builders in the UK, to face-to-face contacts in sales; we have British salespeople. Standardisation of certificates would lower costs and give regulatory stability.” She gave as an example the UK government’s shifting stance on replacing the CE mark with UKCA before finally dropping the requirement after three years of uncertainty for businesses.
Mr Skrudlik recommended stable, transparent law, openness of government, and a level playing-field in which foreign investors and private capital were on an equal footing with state-controlled Polish firms. “Interpretations of, for example tax law, should tend to favour the entrepreneur and not the state. Tax and law in Poland are not simple to understand for foreign investors and can be off-putting.” He also said that many potential investors’ ideas about Poland are not up to date, and they need to see the country’s progress with their own eyes.
Fot. Marcin Kmieciński – PAP
