A software company can be started almost anywhere. A company that builds machines or energy equipment cannot. It needs engineers who have worked on a production floor, suppliers who can machine a part to drawing within the week, customers close enough to visit, and a service team that can reach a site the same day. Those things cluster. They take decades to form and they do not move quickly.

That is the main reason Cyberius builds in Poland, and why we think Central Europe is one of the better places in Europe to start a physical company today.

A manufacturing economy, still growing

Manufacturing produced 16.9% of Poland's gross value added in 2025, according to Eurostat. The EU average was 15.8%. Germany, the benchmark for industrial Europe, stood at 19.4%.

The direction matters as much as the level. Between 2015 and 2025 manufacturing employment in Poland rose from about 3.09 million to 3.36 million people. Over the same decade it fell in Germany, from 7.51 million to 7.26 million. Poland now accounts for roughly one in nine manufacturing jobs in the EU.

For a company building industrial equipment, that is the customer base and the talent pool at once. The people who will buy, install and maintain your product already work in factories nearby, and many of them have spent years inside supply chains run for German, Scandinavian and other Western European customers. They know what a specification, an audit and a delivery window mean.

The cost advantage is real, and shrinking

Hourly labour costs in Polish manufacturing were €17.10 in 2025, against €35.00 across the EU and €49.50 in Germany, Eurostat estimates. A prototype, a small production run or a service organisation costs considerably less to build here than in Western Europe.

That gap is closing, and it should be read that way. Labour costs across the Polish economy rose 8.8% in 2025 in national currency, one of the fastest increases in the EU. A company whose only advantage is cheap labour has a shrinking advantage.

The more useful conclusion runs the other way. Rising wages in a large manufacturing base create steady demand for automation. Across the EU there are 231 industrial robots for every 10,000 manufacturing employees, according to the International Federation of Robotics, and 449 in Germany. Factories that grew on relatively cheap labour now need machines, integration and service to stay competitive. That is the market Roboteus works in: CNC machines, laser cutters and industrial robots, with the integration and service that make them pay back.

Suppliers within a day's drive

Physical companies fail on logistics more often than on technology. A late component can stop a production run, and an engineer who has to fly to every installation makes service slow and expensive.

Poland sits between Germany, Scandinavia and the rest of Central Europe, with a motorway network that did not exist a generation ago. Łódź, where Gaia Solar is based, sits close to where the A1 and A2 motorways cross, which puts much of the country, and the German border, within a day's drive. For a young company that means suppliers you can visit, customers you can reach for a pilot, and a service radius that covers most of the domestic market from a single base.

An energy system in transition

Poland's power system was built on coal and is changing quickly. That change is uncomfortable for incumbents and useful for builders. Rooftop solar spread across the country during the last decade, and energy storage is following. Analysts at Modo Energy estimate that Poland's capacity-market auctions from 2022 to 2025 contracted around 11 GW of battery capacity, much of it still to be built.

A market that is being rebuilt needs distribution, installer training, grid know-how and service as much as it needs hardware. Gaia Solar was built around that need: it distributes Sigenergy energy storage and supports the installers who put it on the wall.

What is harder here

Central Europe is not an easy place to build a company, and it is better to say so.

Growth capital is thinner than in Western Europe, especially for hardware. Rounds that would be routine in Munich or Stockholm can take much longer to assemble in Warsaw. Rising wages mean a business plan built on today's cost base will be wrong within a few years. Grid connection conditions for new energy projects are hard to obtain. Permits and certification take patience, and public funding programmes can pull a young company towards what is fundable rather than what customers will pay for.

None of these is a reason to build elsewhere. They are reasons to build with partners who have dealt with them before, and to plan the company's calendar around certification, deliveries and installation seasons rather than around funding rounds.

What this means for founders

If you are building an industrial company in energy or automation, Central Europe gives you a manufacturing base that is still growing, engineers who know production, suppliers within reach and a market that needs what you make. It asks for patience with capital and honesty about costs.

That combination suits the way Cyberius works: capital at formation, operators inside the company and introductions to the first customers and suppliers. If you are building here, or thinking about it, we would like to hear from you.

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