The Australia and Hungary leg of My Most Trusted,
a national and global super-community of
90,294
trusted connections in our Trusted Universe, October 2026
Australia · Hungary
kender. Hungarian for hemp, a crop Hungary grew and spun for centuries, and one both sides of this Bridge are working to bring back.
Take a tour of the Australia-Hungary Bridge Who holds each side
Brought to you by
Australia Hungary Chamber of Commerce and IndustryThis Bridge is brought to you by the Australia Hungary Chamber of Commerce and Industry, whose President, Charles Kovess, hosts the Australian side.
The Australia-Hungary Business Bridge is for Australian companies that want Hungarian clients, suppliers or partners, and for Hungarian firms looking to Australia, with someone already vouching for them on the other side.
Australia has a large and long-settled Hungarian community, and plenty of family ties run between Melbourne and Budapest. Turning those ties into business is harder. The markets are half a world apart, the business cultures differ, and a cold email from the other side of the planet is easy to ignore. A personal referral from someone both sides know closes that gap quickly.
It is also where careers move. Members in Australia and Hungary sometimes meet their next employer, find their next job or make their next hire through The Australia-Hungary Business Bridge, because the best roles are often filled by someone a trusted person recommends.
Charles in Melbourne and Jozsef in Budapest have done business together for a quarter of a century. Each knows how deals really get done at home, and between them they decide which introductions are worth making.
AustraliaMelbourne
Charles Kovess hosts the Australian side of the Bridge from Melbourne. He has been President of the Australia Hungary Chamber of Commerce and Industry for 36 years, and he is President of the Australian Industrial Hemp Alliance.
He is also CEO and International Marketing Director of Textile & Composite Industries (TCI), which has developed patented machinery for industrial hemp decortication, fibre extraction and processing, and he has worked for years on bringing hemp fibre and textile production back to Eastern Europe.
For more than 30 years he has worked with C-suite leaders and teams who are technically brilliant but stuck, helping them rediscover passion and purpose, because, as he puts it, passion isn't a soft skill, it's a business strategy. Before that he spent 20 years as a high-level tax lawyer, until in 1993 he walked away from the courtroom to help leaders find their fire. He is CEO of Kovess International, a keynote speaker and executive coach, and the host of The Charles Kovess Show.
He studied law at the University of Melbourne and holds a Master of Laws from Monash University.
More about CharlesHungaryBudapest
Jozsef Szente hosts the Hungarian side of the Bridge from Budapest. He has 46 years of experience, 33 of them in marketing, business development and project management, and he has worked between Budapest and Melbourne.
He has been a project director at BDO Hungary IT Solutions, where he built its GDPR business and led its GDPR compliance project, a senior sales consultant at Esri Hungary and a business development manager at Logbord. Today, as an independent entrepreneur, he researches the market for industrial hemp in Hungary, from growing and processing to how it can be used, and works with hemp associations.
He and Charles Kovess have done business together for 25 years.
More about JozsefAsk an older Hungarian about kender and you may hear about the hemp fields and rope works their grandparents knew. Hungary was long one of Europe's great hemp growers. Today Australian and Hungarian growers, engineers and manufacturers are rebuilding that industry together, and it is a fair picture of this Bridge: something both countries know how to do, done better when the right people on each side are introduced.