Finally after much travelling I arrive at the Chinese Plastics Exhibition
It is a good exhibition. There are others in China of course, and this one has given me a taste of them. I’ll be back to China Pec and I’ll be going to many more. I’m not sure if I’ll purchase machinery or moulds or products but I might.
When I had my meeting at New Zealand Central in Shanghai with New Zealand’s consulate and other business people (and before I go on, I just want to say how very helpful they were to me as a small, albeit growing fast, new businessman, thank you)… anyway, I asked them what were the most important points about business in China. They gave me these pointers:
- The China Price. This isn’t just that it may be cheap, very very cheap, but it can also differ extremely from one supplier to another, from one distribution channel to another, and also from one supplier depending on if they want to do businesses with you.
- Close to China Price is quality, connected to price, it also has a huge variance. They said to be very careful and to check, check and double check.
- Size and volume. The Chinese don’t sell by the box or pack. It is by containers, 40 foot ones. This is a big place with very very big factories.
The staff of the various Chinese companies were very helpful, most booths had English speakers, they were happy, fun, and hard, hard working.
I haven’t really explored Tangzhou, a large city of about 5 million people further south than Ningbo from Shanghai, about a 1 hour flight. However, at the same time, it is really a huge urban sprawl and much more industrial than Shanghai seems to be. It seems smaller than the 5 million in many respects, the airport is more famililar to say Invercargill or Timaru, certainly less impressive than say New Zealand’s second tier airports such as Dunedin or Hamilton and these cities are only 1/50 the size of Tangzhou. China can be a bit like this. It wouldn’t surprise me if I came back in 2 or 3 years and Tangzhou Airport was international and larger than Auckland or Kingsford Smith in Sydney. I’m not just saying this, I mean it seriously. Hangzhou for example is not really a lot larger (9 million), it is the capital of the province that Tangzhou is in, the Zhejiang province that is west and south of Shanghai. It has a large, new and modern international airport.
One thing that was lacking at the conference was food, or decent food. Most was McDonalds that was provided by the nearest McDonalds down the road that would ship in Big Macs in big styrofoam chilli bins (hot bins if you know what I mean). YUMMY, not. There was not one cup of coffee to be found. However, I guess you don’t come to conferences to be feed but we had to leave every so often for refreshments. The booths were all staffed by very keen owners and staff of the various factories, mostly from this “Glorious Plastics Province” of Tangzhou and most had good english speaking staff to help too, they were great.
And of course there were all the plastics machines, and the place was alive with humming, clanging of moulds, bottles and injection moulded parts be ejected, hopper loaders blowing, grinders destroying bottles, conveyor belts, and the din of negotiation and oohhhs and ahhhhs. Noisy!! and fun.
