Ventures Dialogue

Carla Kearns, Managing Director of TLI-The Mandarin School, has been retained by Summerhill as Business Development Director.  Summerhill has worked with Kearns and TLI-The Mandarin School for the last 2 years in the Canada China Environmental Forum.

“This is a natural extension of our successful collaboration over the past 2 years on the Canada China Environmental Forum,” says Kearns.

Kearns will manage key accounts and develop business, including the promising Chinese market for environmental services.

Summerhill engages partners such as national retailers, utilities and power companies, innovative technology providers and government agencies to design and deliver programs that drive positive environmental impact, consumer behaviour change and economic benefit.

You might be familiar with Summerhill’s work through their specific programmes:

• Car Heaven, which took almost 90,000 old clunkers off the road and saving 50,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (and predating the American current Cash for Clunkers programme by 9 years).

• Switch Out, the first programme in Canada to recover highly toxic mercury from automobile switches – recycling 300 kgs of mercury (one gram of mercury pollutes a 20 acre lake so that the fish rae inedible for 1 year).

• Keep Cool, which used a combination of education, incentives and collection programmes to retire and recycle almost 50,000 inefficient Room Air Conditioners (RACs) – saving 30 MW of energy (enough to power 30,000 average homes in a year) and saving 15,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

TLI-The Mandarin School will continue to deliver corporate language and intercultural business training programmes.

Canadian Environment Trade Mission to Hong Kong
October 26 – November 1, 2009

This mission is organized for Canadian environmental companies interested in expanding their business to China and Hong Kong. Companies with technologies, equipment, products and/or services in air quality, energy efficiency, waste management & recycling, water & wastewater treatment, renewable energy and eco-friendly products are encouraged to participate.

Co-organized by the Consulate General of Canada in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (HKETO), this mission aims at assisting participants to find potential business and partnership opportunities, access to targeted business networks and first-hand market intelligence.

This initiative is supported by the Canada China Environment Forum (CCEF), Ontario Chamber of Commerce (OCC), Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (OCRI), as well as the Provincial Governments of Alberta, B.C., Manitoba, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

The mission programme will help delegates find:
• Potential business partnership opportunities
• Access to targeted business networks
• First-hand market intelligence
• An opportunity to participate in the concurrent Eco Expo Asia international trade fair and conference on environmental protection (http://ecoexpoasia.hktdc.com/).

Highlights of the programmes include: a special programme consisting of a market briefing session, roundtable discussion with industry experts, pre-arranged one-on-one business meetings with key Hong Kong and China businesses and other networking activities on October 27, 2009. There is no registration fee required for joining this mission. Delegates are responsible for their respective airfares, hotel accommodation and incidental expenses. Group programmes will be sponsored. Delegates are also eligible to apply for partial hotel accommodation sponsorships. For more information, contact Adrian Cheng or Jill Chien of HKTDC Toronto Office at Tel. No.: (416) 366-3594 or email: adrian.ch.cheng@hktdc.org, jill.chien@tdc.org.hk. The registration deadline is September 30, 2009.

A 3.3 per cent rise in Hong Kong’s gross domestic product (GDP) from April to June shows that the recession, from them, is over.   This rise is a welcomed change from the first quarter, as January to March posted 4.3 per cent decline.  In fact, due to the global credit crisis, Hong Kong’s economy has posted negative growth since the second quarter of 2008.    

Even though the rise in GDP is a good sign, it should be noted that for 2009, Hong Kong’s economy is still expected to decline by 3.5 to 4.5 per cent.  Overall, this is better than the government previously forecasted 5.5 to 6.5 per cent drop for the year. 

Hong Kong is not the first to step out from under the recessionary clouds however.  Singapore, Japan, France, and Germany have also announced they are experiencing growth as well.

To find out more about Hong Kong’s recovery, read these articles from the BBC and Forbes.com.  As well you might be interested in Europe’s climb in this article also from the BBC. 

Photo by Tearsandrain

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is on a high level mission to China with some of Canada’s heaviest finiancial hitters.  Not only have some of the key players in Canada’s banking industry joined him on the trade mission, but the head of the Bank of Canada, Mark Carney, is also on board.

For a country where the state plays a large role in business, this kind of high level mission is very important.  Canadian businesses have made successful inroads in China and have a very significant presence in Hong Kong, due in large part to a long and prosperous history between the two nations.  However, diplomatic efforts are necessary as well if we are to grow Canada-China trade.

This fact was made loud and clear by Dr. William Yip, a Hong Kong businessman with whom I met while in Hong Kong in January.  Dr. Yip chronicled a number of Canadian companies who have successfully leveraged connections to party officials into business success.  He explained that party opinions are very important.  What they think and what they know about your project carries a lot of weight.  Hence his statement that,

 ”in Western culture, all roads can lead to the room.  In China, there are lots of dead end roads – they tell you all roads lead to the room.”

Liberal International Trade Critic, Scott Brison, argues in today’s National Post that not enough has been done to strengthen diplomatic relations with China. 

Regardless of your thoughts on the past three years, a visit planned by Prime Minister Harper to China in November will be welcomed by the Canadian business community as a step in the right direction.

Could China become the next big car manufacturer?  Well, quite possibly if you ask Geely, China’s biggest privately owned car manufacturer.  It is currently developing six model platforms, dedicated to launching nine new cars over the next year and a half, and by 2015, the company cites 42 new models will be on the market.   In the recent article, The ambition of Geely, from The Economist, it highlights Geely’s aspirations, but also raises some concerns.  Namely, its dependence on government tax breaks, which is likely to be a main reason of its increased sales in the first half of the year.  There are also concerns surrounding the safety of its cars and not being on par with Western levels.  In a crash test by a Russian car magazine of the Geely CK, the driver and passenger were given a 10 percent survival rate.

Nevertheless, this is not stopping Geely.  The company aims at selling 1.3 million cars abroad by 2015 (30,000 foreign cars were sold in 2008).  Geely has not only increased employment levels, but has created its own university, the Zhejiang Automotive Engineering Institute, and has assets abroad as well.  It also plans to build factories in South Africa and Mexico.  And, according to the article, Geely might be in the game to buy a European car company. 

So Geely has big plans, we’ll just have to wait and see what develops.

Click here to read the full article from The Economist.

You might also want to visit Geely’s website and view some of their videos.