PIDU, the Polish Dual Use Chamber: supporting dual-use business at national and international level

On 30 March 2026 in Warsaw, at the Targowa Creativity Centre, the Polish Dual Use Chamber, which acronym is PIDU, for Polska Izba Dual Use, was inaugurated. PIDU aims at being a platform which brings together players operating across the security domain and the civil one, such companies, institutions, and investors

Numerous technologies are common to the military, the law enforcement, and the civilian domains; communications, satellites, cyber, are the most common ones, but also optronics, unmanned systems and several other find applications in more than one domain. Telemedecine, for example, was developed to bring high level medical care in remote locations, but can also be used in the military, to push forward professional medical care in the battlefield. Developing new technologies and products that have wider applications allows to better exploit R&D investments, reduce non recurrent costs, accelerate time to market.

At MSPO EDR On-Line met Łukasz Czajkowski, the PIDU General Manager. The meeting was organised by Polska Agencja Inwestycji i Handlu (PAIH), the Polish Investment and Trade Agency [1], which invited our media to a study tour on the Polish Defence Industry. PAIH is supporting the dual-use sector, and on June 25, during the Ukraine Recovery Conference, it signed a memorandum of cooperation with PIDU.

“Since we were created this year, we are growing very fast and around 15 companies join each month. Right now, we are having 72, but probably by the end of the year there will likely be more than 100,” Mr. Czajkowski told EDR On-Line at the Creotech stand, the Polish leading satellite company, which is part of PIDU. “We are focusing on a wide variety of dual use technologies, creating an umbrella organization for Polish industrial and technology ecosystem. PIDU was created by business, investors, former military officers, experts and advisors, and it aims at integrating the widely understood topic of dual use technologies and so-called new defence, both at Polish and European level,” he told us, adding that PIDU looks of course firstly at Poland but also at the wider European context, some non-Polish companies having already signed in. “Currently 85% of our member companies are Polish companies, while the remaining 15% are mostly European, including French, German, Swedish and Ukrainian companies, and we also have one Japanese digital company; during MSPO we are meeting several companies from other nations.”

PIDU focuses on five specific areas. “We have five verticals: Aerospace and aviation industry; Drones and autonomous systems; Digital technologies, software, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity; Critical infrastructure, protective infrastructure, and construction; Modern industry, materials, components, and logistics,” Łukasz Czajkowski detailed. The latter sector sees the civilian industry more and more interested in widening its scope towards defence, considering the need to increase military production, a dual use manufacturing ecosystem possibly helping increasing defence production volumes.

The whole defence sector of is becoming more flexible, and there is the need to have a more flexible base compared to the past, he underlined. “Up to three years ago you ordered 300 tanks. Now you should order smaller batches, test them, and constantly innovate, inserting new technologies. Conflicts in Ukraine or in Iran have highlighted how fast is technology progress, and equipment like drones that was produced two years ago is already obsolete.”

Widening the concept on an international basis is part of the PIDU intent. “As Poland is becoming widely understood as one of the European leaders of the defence and dual use market, we have created this chamber to be a partner for domestical business, for different chambers, for public government, but also to become a partner for international for international organisation, and during this couple of days in Kielce, we are having like over 15 meetings with different countries, including Singapore, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Hungary, Latvia, and Lithuania,” the PIDU Managing Director told us. “We see that there is also a big need of integration when we speak about European defence industry. And we believe that strong chambers, industry chambers here that cooperate with each other, that know each other may facilitate the integration. Not maybe for defence primes, who know each other quite well, but for tier two and small and medium enterprises [SMEs], providing nets of matchmaking, networking, connections, which may speed up the process or identify partners sooner, especially having in mind that credibility and reliability of the potential partner is an important fact.”

PDU is screening all its new members from the very beginning, checking who is the shareholder, who is the ultimate beneficiary, that the company is not on the sanction list, that there is no hint of corruption or similar. If something emerges, the chamber asks the company to provide explanation, and if this is not satisfactory, membership is rejected. “The aim is to keep us like a safe environment, and until now we had a couple of cases, which are right now being explained.”

For the time being most of the PIDU members are SMEs, but at least two members are what in Poland is considered a “big” company, with a turnover of over one billion PLN, around 250,000 Euro. However, the growing number of members is now attracting also tier one companies. “We are constantly building industrial and technology ecosystem and constantly feeding that info to primes,” Mr. Czajkowski explained, the increasing number of companies adding value to the PIDU as it allows primes to connect with reliable partners avoiding wasting time. On the other hand, the chamber also prepares smaller and unexperienced companies on how to approach meetings with bigger players, increasing the efficiency of mutual relationship. Some companies with good technical capabilities sometime lack the knowledge of the numerous bureaucratic and formalities typical of the defence industrial world, and PIDU is there to help.

Three months after its creation the Polish Dual Use Chamber seems on the right path to increase its role in the Polish and European dual-use and defence ecosystems.

Images and photos courtesy Creotech, Spyrosoft, WB Group, Wojskowe Zakłady Łączności No. 1

[1] PAIH is the first point of contact for exporters and investors operating in dozens of markets globally. It provides free consulting to grow and promote Polish businesses. Among its missions, PAIH supports Polish companies in promoting their brands on export markets.