Israel Active

Amazon.com is in talks to set up its first shipping center in Israel. The world’s largest online retailer will hopefully soon begin operations in Israel, in a move that would lower shipping prices, waiting times, and import fees for Israeli consumers.

The Israeli Ministry of Economy is working with Chinese venture capital firms DayDayUp and ShengJing360 to launch two accelerators for Israeli startups in Beijing. The Ministry of Economy has already announced the ten startups selected to participate in the program.

3 Israeli universities have climbed up the London Times’ Higher Education ranking of graduate employability.  The Technion came top for digital skills and third in corporate links. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University both improved on their 2016 rankings.

Business contacts between the UK and Israel are soaring, stimulated by Brexit issues and the current relative low value of Sterling. Recent activity includes the Innovate Israel 2017 conference in London and the UK Israel Business chamber of commerce’s largest delegation to Israel.

Incoming tourism broke records on 7th Nov, when Wizz Air Flight No. 3257 landed in Israel, carrying Romanian tourist Ioana Isac, the 3 millionth tourist to arrive in Israel this year. Ioana and her partner were treated to a dream vacation courtesy of the Israeli Tourism Ministry.

Fluence Corporation (merger of Israel’s Emefcy and RWL Water) is to supply three NIROBOX reverse-osmosis seawater desalination units for the French island of Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean. It follows the company’s recent award of a NIROBOX plant in South Africa.

Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air has announced that, from March 25, 2018, it will operate daily flights on the Tel Aviv to London Luton route, instead of the four flights a week it currently offers. Wizz is adding four Airbus A320 aircraft to its fleet based at Luton Airport.

Israel’s SuperCom has won an 8-year contract to build and operate a new central personalization system for electronic passports and national ID cards in Iceland.

Samsung Electronics has launched its International Cyber Security Smart Mobility Analysis and Research Test (SMART) Range in Israel. Its aim is to protect autonomous vehicles, devices and roadways from dangerous intrusions.

I reported previously (Nov 2016) that Daimler (owner of Mercedes Benz) planned to launch an Israeli R&D center. It is now open and aims to unify the four mega trends impacting the automobile industry: connectivity, autonomous vehicles, ride-sharing and electro-mobility.