How to Become a Supplier to Poland's First Nuclear Plant

Poland's first nuclear power plant is going up at Lubiatowo-Kopalino, a coastal site in Choczewo municipality, Pomerania. The investor and future operator is Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe (PEJ), a state-owned company (Chancellery of the Prime Minister). A consortium of Westinghouse and Bechtel builds the plant, and Bechtel is the main contractor (PEJ).

That gives suppliers three layers of buyers. PEJ buys owner-side work. The Westinghouse-Bechtel consortium handles engineering, procurement and construction (the EPC side) and buys the large packages. The firms Bechtel has already signed, Polimex Mostostal and Budimex among them, buy for their own packages.

The schedule runs for years. PEJ filed for its construction license in March 2026, and the National Atomic Energy Agency (PAA) has up to 24 months to decide (PAA).

Who holds the buying decision for each package?

On a project run by an owner and an EPC contractor, the supplier is usually chosen by the team that holds the package. The investor's board does not pick the company that delivers rebar to an earthworks contractor. That decision sits two or three levels down, with the person who has to deliver that piece of work on time.

The government picked Westinghouse's AP1000 reactor technology for this plant back in 2022 (PAA). Since then, the holder of the work has moved. In August 2026 PEJ handed the site over to Bechtel, and Budimex began the earthworks. Bechtel then signed Polimex Mostostal to supply, install and commission two large Module Assembly Buildings for the AP1000 units. PEJ reports these awards, and six Polish companies at the last stage of supplier qualification, on its website.

This is why the wrong contact costs months. A supplier who writes to PEJ about a scope Bechtel now controls gets forwarded at best. Each forward adds delay, and the person who finally reads your note meets you second-hand. In a buyer set this small, there is no spare list to move on to afterwards.

When my team builds a list for a client who sells large projects, we start with that client's past projects and write down who really signed each one. Do the same before you touch this market. If your last three power or industrial contracts were signed by a contractor's subcontracts manager, that is your first title here too.

Keep the target to this one chain: PEJ and the companies building for it, not the Polish nuclear market as a whole. A narrow target is easier to write for. That is why I push every company toward one offer for one audience in outbound.

Which parts of the plant are bought by PEJ and which by Bechtel?

The table splits the work by who holds each package. The scope examples follow what PEJ and the government have published. The contact column is a starting point for your list, not an org chart.

Use four rules to pick your first buyer:

• Your work happens on the site before construction, or stays with the operator once the plant runs: start with PEJ.
• Your product becomes part of the plant, or you can deliver a whole construction package: start with Bechtel's procurement and subcontracts side.
• You supply something a contractor needs for its package, such as steel, cranes or a specialist trade: start with that contractor, not Bechtel.
• Your scope touches the reactor design itself: start with the technology side of the consortium.

The Budimex and Polimex Mostostal awards matter for one reason. They prove local packages exist and are being placed now.

If more than one person in your company will contact this chain, split the table between them. With a buyer set this small, two colleagues pitching the same subcontracts manager in one week looks careless. My team gives every sender their own slice of the list, so two people never write to the same buyer.

What proof do nuclear buyers expect before they talk?

A nuclear buyer reads a supplier the way an auditor would. "Premium quality" and "trusted partner" do nothing. Certificates, records and named projects do.

Put the proof in the message itself: client names, results and project references. A buyer may never open your website. If your references are thin on paper, start with how to use case studies in cold email.

Run this yes/no check before you approach anyone in the chain:

1. Can you name your quality certifications, with the issuing body and the expiry date?
2. Is every drawing, procedure and revision controlled, so you can show which version a part was built to?
3. Can you trace a delivered part back to its material batch and test certificate?
4. Do you keep inspection and test records a buyer could audit next week?
5. Do you have 2 or 3 references from power, oil and gas or other high-integrity projects, each with a contact who will take a call?
6. Can you deliver one full package without letting your other clients down?
7. Is your outreach itself clean, with authenticated sending domains and a verified list?

Any "no" on items 1 to 4 means fixing it before your first message. A "no" on item 5 means starting with a subcontractor, where a smaller reference can still win a smaller package. Item 7 is the cheap one. A supplier selling traceability whose emails bounce has already lost the argument.

The same pass-fail habit works on the replies you get back. Before a reply turns into a meeting, check whether that person holds a package you can serve. If they do not, ask who does.

How do Polish, US, and European suppliers reach the project chain?

The route is the same for everyone. The first door depends on where you are based.

1. Pick the layer and the package from the table above.
2. Find the person who holds that package. I build lists on the titles a niche really uses and never on a bare "manager" title. Here that means subcontracts managers, package managers, procurement leads and supplier quality managers. For the mechanics, see what to do when your outbound market is small.
3. Send a short first contact that shows your package fit and one piece of proof, and asks for a short call. In our campaigns, the first message sells the meeting and nothing bigger.
4. Follow up with real time between sends. I wrote up the follow-up sequence that works separately.

Where you are based changes step 3:

• Polish suppliers. Polish firms are already inside the US supply chain. On a 2024 trade mission, almost 30 Polish companies met US nuclear firms including Westinghouse and Bechtel, and the ministry logged orders already filled by Polish firms in over a dozen instances, mostly specific components for US nuclear plants (Ministry of Climate and Environment). When a local angle exists, I use it, because a buyer opens up faster to someone from the same region. A fabricator in Pomerania writing in Polish to a Polish subcontractor starts warmer than anyone abroad.
• US suppliers. The EPC partners are American. If you have already delivered to either of them on a project at home, that reference travels, so name the project in your first line.
• Other European suppliers. The easiest door is often a Polish subcontractor that already holds a package and needs your product to deliver it.

An honest note on my side of this. My team mostly runs campaigns into the US, the UK and Europe, and mostly in English. Where part of a buyer chain sits in Germany, Austria or the Czech Republic, we do not open with cold email without a compliant basis, and we use LinkedIn instead. Poland also restricts unsolicited commercial email, B2B included, so check your legal basis with a Polish lawyer before any cold email and open on LinkedIn until you have one. For Polish buyers, write in Polish if you can.

Do big contractors reply to narrow industrial suppliers? In my experience they do, when the message is specific to their package.

What does the 2026 to 2028 schedule mean for suppliers?

The license application went in on 31 March 2026, so the PAA's 24-month decision window runs into 2028. The agency first runs a formal and legal check of the application before the safety review itself.

While that runs, a bridge agreement signed in April 2025 keeps design work, permits and deeper geological studies moving until the final design and construction contract is signed.

For a supplier, that means two kinds of work. Site preparation, earthworks and the module buildings are being placed now. A lot of the plant's scope will only move once the license and the full EPC contract are in place.

Plan for a long gap between the first call and the first purchase order, and stretch it further on a reactor site than anywhere else. In our campaigns, calls can come in the first 30 days, while the deals behind them close 4+ months later, and B2B sales cycles of 6, 9 or 12 months are normal. On a nuclear package, budget for the long end of that range.

Early outreach still pays. A "talk to me after the license decision" reply is a real lead. Put it in your CRM with a date.

Three things are worth watching next:

• The PAA plans to post the filed application and a short safety summary in its Public Information Bulletin. Read it for the technical solutions your scope has to match.
• New subcontract awards on PEJ's news page. Each one names a new package holder, and that holder becomes your buyer.
• The signing of the final EPC contract, when the bigger packages start to move.

The program also reaches beyond one plant. The government plans two nuclear power plants with 6-9 GW of combined capacity (Chancellery of the Prime Minister), so a reference won on the first site can open the second.

What should a supplier send in the first message?

Four lines do the job. The first names the exact package you fit. The second gives proof: a certification, one similar project and traceability. The third asks for 15 minutes. The fourth is your name.

Here is a made-up example from a Polish steel fabricator to the purchasing lead on a module building package. It is shown in English; send yours in the buyer's language.

Subject: steel for the module assembly buildings

Hi Marta,

We fabricate structural steel in Gdańsk, under two hours from the Choczewo site, and I think we fit the steel scope on your module assembly building package.

We hold ISO 9001 and EN 1090 EXC3, every beam is traceable to its mill certificate, and last year we supplied the structural steel for a turbine hall at a gas power plant in Poland, with the contractor's package manager as our reference.

Could we take 15 minutes next week and check whether we belong on your bidder list?

Tomasz

Look at what is missing. No founding year, no list of 14 services, no capability deck attached, no prices.

Every follow-up adds one new piece of proof: a second project, an audit result, a photo of a traceability record.

What are the most common mistakes suppliers make here?

Writing to the top. The PEJ board or a country director at the consortium does not choose the supplier for a package held by someone else. Go back to the table and write to the holder.

Using generic titles. "Head of business development" and "manager" are guesses. The people who buy packages use titles like subcontracts manager, package manager or supplier quality manager.

Sending a deck instead of asking for a meeting. The first message should sell the meeting, not your services. A 40-page capability deck tries to sell everything at once.

Selling everything to everyone. A message written for every buyer in the chain lands with none of them. Volume cannot rescue a weak offer here either, because the buyer list is too small. When a market is this small, my team skips intent data and builds one offer that makes sense to every company on the list instead.

Start this week. Write the three layers on one sheet, put your strongest package next to one of them, and find the single person who holds it.

If you supply the Polish nuclear build and are unsure whose desk your package sits on, book a call and we can work it out together.