Shanghai Expo 2010
Louise Blockley | Mar 21, 2009 | Comments 0
Fed up with the Chinese scamming your products or still intrigued by the prospects of an ancient kingdom with over a billion people? Will Shanghai Expo 2010 deliver new markets for Kiwi products?
BY: LOUISE BLOCKLEY
Fed up with the Chinese scamming your products or still intrigued by the prospects of an ancient kingdom with over a billion people? Will ShanghaiExpo 2010 deliver new markets for Kiwi products?
World Expos began in style at London’s Crystal Palace in 1851. Historically New Zealand’s presence at the five-yearly extravaganzas has been intermittent but we are fully committed to our new-best- trading-friend’s show – Shanghai Expo 2010.
Commissioner General for New Zealand at Shanghai, Phillip Gibson, refers to Kiwis as “expo pragmatists” – involved only when there is a compelling reason. According to Gibson our compelling reason to build a pavilion at Aichi 2005 was that our third-best-export- friend, Japan, told us to.
Although expos are not trade shows there are compelling reasons for New Zealand exporter’s to attend. Those who attended Aichi were so successful they couldn’t believe more exporters weren’t there.
Keith Cowan, managing director of Christchurch-based H Dawson Sons & Co Wool New Zealand Ltd sent two staff to woo customers in a way he believes is impossible as an individual exporter away from home.
“We were a bit blown away that more companies weren’t using the facility but it gave us a presence in Japan that we’ve never had before.”
LAMB, WINE AND PRESENTATION ROOM
The New Zealand pavilion gave them a home base where lamb cutlets and fine New Zealand wines were on the menu with bilingual hospitality staff and a presentation room provided.
H Dawson has done approximately $20 million of wool business with two of those visitors since. Although Cowan couldn’t say Expo was directly responsible for sealing the deal he believes it significantly elevated the company’s position.
Cowan, like many exporters, is undecided about attending Shanghai 2010 citing the recession as a possible barrier
EXPO THEME
The 2010 Expo theme is “Better City, Better Life with New Zealand’s effort concentrated on “Cities of Nature, Living Between Land and Sky”.
The pavilion will have four spaces – a welcoming veranda under a forest canopy of pillars, a walk along a gradually rising, winding ramp through sea, suburbs, a city centre, mountains and a garden of native plants with sculptures. A mezzanine hospitality area hosts 40 guests for formal dining or 80 for cocktails with a separate meeting/dining room.
Gibson touts our presence at the Japanese Expo as a huge success – 4 million visitors to the NZ pavilion – but says the site in Nagoya was a “little bit off the radar screen of most NZ exporters who would go first to Tokyo or Osaka”.
He reckons there will be a lot more “natural promotion” this time with a more central Shanghai riverside location and China’s trading status with New Zealand. The Chinese have allocated New Zealand the honeymoon-suite site next door to theirs “Last time we did a lot of (Aichi expo) promotion but people just weren’t all that interested,” Gibson says.
Echoing the Beijing Olympics, China is doing it big – predicting 70 million visitors from May to November with 230 countries and organisations exhibiting on the impressive 5.2km site.
These numbers have made New Zealand weak at the knees now more than doubling Aichi’s Japanese dowry for our 2,000sqm Shanghai pavilion. The mostly government-funded tab will top $30 million according to the expo website.
BIG BUCKS
Gibson won’t be specific about the money saying it will be a “significant commitment”. He is also negotiating with private sector sponsors who are offered “discreet product exposure”, acknowledgement of their support, the right to advertise their support and access to the VIP hospitality and meeting rooms.
New Zealand businesses not sponsoring the pavilion can host their Chinese contacts for business meetings, lunches, dinners and functions by arrangement with NZTE. It is open to all New Zealand companies, not only existing NZTE clients.
As for the economic downturn, Gibson is adamant it won’t affect China’s commitment but concedes other participants may reassess budgets. Chinese authorities recently announced they will not be downgrading anything.
“China is just so big and so important and this is just such a massive undertaking, that for all of us who are doing business with China we have got to be there and we have got to be there in style,” says Gibson.
This sentiment is not echoed wholeheartedly by everyone in the export industry. Tradex director, Norm Morgan says, “As a tradeshow company we have no inclination to do a show in China anymore and we don’t think it is in any New Zealand exporter’s interest to go there because, quite frankly, you are never going to win in China.”
Some businessmen surveyed by exporter magazine are fed up with their products being copied and sold cheaper by Chinese companies and are deterred by “scammers” at trade fairs. Others argue this thinking is shortsighted and see risk management as just a part of the overall equation.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has responsibility for New Zealand’s presence in Shanghai with input from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of for Cultural Heritage and Tourism New Zealand.
The Shanghai Expo runs from May 1 to October 31, 2010. NZTE is predicting seven million people will visit the New Zealand pavilion.
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