I have a column column in a table which i tried both varchar, text and longtext options with a length i set to 255 characters

I have also tried adding column pcode as an INDEX.

Inserting data eg

POWG-AE – RPE/ADV – UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – SGBL2 

into the column is no issue but when I try to search with = or REGEXP or LIKE%% for the string POWG-AE – RPE/ADV – UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – SGBL2, I get no results at all (yet the pcode does exists in the table)

Here is my query

SELECT *
FROM dash__guru_projects
WHERE pcode = 'POWG-AE – RPE/ADV – UNITED ARAB EMIRATES – SGBL2'

Could DB collation have any impact on this?