TradeBridge empowers trade and investment between Ireland and Georgia by developing new export markets and job creation opportunities.
County Wexford, Ireland and Savannah, Georgia have a shared history going back 170 years when immigrants from Wexford fled the famine and settled in Savannah with the hope of a new start. Three County Wexford shipping companies operated a direct transatlantic service between County Wexford and Savannah in the 1840s and 1850s and the Wexford diaspora quickly gained a reputation for making a valuable contribution to their adopted community. And so the Wexford-Savannah Axis began and the cultural links continued to flourish.
More than a century later, Georgia Southern University undertook a major research project to uncover the details of how the Wexford-Savannah Axis developed. The publication of these findings, along with the encouragement of Wexford County Council, influenced Georgia Southern University to locate its first overseas campus in Wexford Town.
TradeBridge was created based on this rich foundation. In 2017, Wexford Enterprise Association, through Wexford Enterprise Center and in conjunction with its partners, Wexford County Council, Enterprise Ireland, Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) and the World Trade Center Savannah, conceived and incubated the pilot TradeBridge initiative, which ran for two years over 2018 and 2019.
Its key aim was to create a trade corridor into the U.S. for Wexford companies, as well as create a gateway for Savannah-based businesses to export into Europe. 35 companies engaged with the TradeBridge pilot program, representing the engineering and advanced manufacturing, agritech, education and information, communications & technology (ICT) sectors.
With the success of the pilot initiative, three-year funding was granted from Enterprise Ireland under their Regional Enterprise Development Fund to expand upon the pilot initiative and advance it into a fully-fledged regional development program.
Central to TradeBridge’s mission are the core pillars of engagement, which include strategic matchmaking across the sectors of trade and economic development, relationship building, culture, civic initiatives, education, tourism, sports, and film. These pillars provide a comprehensive framework through which TradeBridge advances bilateral collaboration, ensuring that partnerships extend beyond commerce to encompass the broader social, cultural, and civic dimensions of regional development.
Today, TradeBridge encompasses the six counties in Ireland; Carlow, Kilkenny, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford, as well as the 16 counties of Southeast Georgia: Appling, Brantley, Bryan, Bulloch, Burke, Camden, Candler, Chatham, Charlton, Effingham, Glynn, Jenkins, Liberty, McIntosh, Screven, Toombs, and Wayne.
If you’re interested in exploring trade with Ireland, please reach out directly to Chris Ahearn, Director of Research and Trade Development, cahearn@wtcsavannah.org +1 912-655-0366.
