SHENZHEN, China, Dec. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 23 and 24, China and Italy held a Cooperation Forum in Venice, Italy, for China's Belt and Road initiative to align with the development strategies of Europe.
Venice is a famous port city, and an important site of the Belt and Road entry into Europe. Nearly 200 people of political, academic and business circles from China, Italy, Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan attended the forum. Fan Gang, president of China (Shenzhen) Development Institute, and Paolo Borzatta, senior partner of The European House Ambrosetti, hosted and gave speeches as the representatives of the organizers - China and Italy.
In addition, the Chinese Ambassador to Italy, the Italian Ambassador to Georgia, the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Italy, former Venice Mayor and heads of the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transportation, the Turkish Customs and Trade, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Export-Import Bank of China, and the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, Silk Road Fund, Venice Port Authority, Tianjin Port, Huawei, Hainan Airlines and CIMC were all invited to deliver speeches related to the Belt and Road, and discuss China-EU cooperation.
All the participants from China and Europe expressed their expectation with regard to further cooperation of interconnection between China and Europe, and also hoped to tap more opportunities for business and social cooperation, and to set up a better cooperation mechanisms.
Qin Gang, assistant president of CIMC, introduced CIMC's experience of overseas expansion as an example at the forum. With the theme of "bringing new business opportunities with new value", he emphatically introduced the practice and experience of how CIMC had explored globalization over the past decade.
He said that CIMC has adhered to the idea of "bringing new business opportunities with new value" to participate in global business cooperation, whether it was overseas business cooperation or foreign mergers and acquisitions. As a result, CIMC has been welcomed by business partners while benefiting from those businesses, because it has been bringing incremental value like markets, business platforms, capital, technologies, revenues and employment opportunities. The concept of "Global Operation, Local Wisdom" has been the focus for CIMC.
He hoped that CIMC, an early adapter to globalization in China, would carry out deeper cooperation with European partners under the Belt and Road initiative in the future, and also hoped that these experiences would bring more inspiration to China-EU enterprises.
CIMC was established in 1980, in Shekou, Shenzhen, where China started its great reform. The development of CIMC, reflects its integration with the international markets in technologies, markets, products, funds, talents, supply chains, services and so on. This has helped position CIMC as a leader in various fields. CIMC has become a multinational group with an annual output value of more than 600 billion yuan, providing first-class global logistics, energy equipment and services to the world. CIMC lead the world market with over 10 sub-sector products in 8 major business segments. CIMC has more than 300 member enterprises worldwide, its customers and selling networks spread all over more than 100 countries and regions, including more than 30 overseas enterprises, about 7,000 overseas staff members. Overseas earnings account for 60% of total revenue of the group.
Qin gang said that the slogan of CIMC is "Create, Make, New Value". The pursuit of globalization is consistent with this idea. Take Ziegler as an example. CIMC turned Ziegler into a profitable company in just over three years after its acquisition in 2013. In 2016, Ziegler's revenue grew by 26% YoY. In the past, 85% of orders came from Germany, but now more than 50% come from other markets. The same is true for German gas engineering company TGE, which belongs to CIMC's Energy segment. In 2008, this was a loss-making enterprise with only EUR 30 million in revenue. After the acquisition, CIMC helped TGE to undertake most of the LNG terminal storage tank projects in China, including more than ten 10,160,000 cubic meters of large cryogenic storage tanks in Ningbo, Zhejiang, Zhoushan, Shenzhen Dapeng and Jiangsu Qidong. In the past few years, TGE has rapidly increased revenue. Most of the enterprises acquired by CIMC have similar experiences.
"Whether Holvriekar in the Netherlands, Vanguard in the United States or other companies, their management cadres all told us that they were just normal managers of a local company; however, after joining CIMC, their role on the international operation platform has become more important, which greatly enhances their international perspective and sense of accomplishment," Qin Gang said.
Finally, Qin Gang indicated, With the deepening development of the Belt and Road in the future, we will have more opportunities to connect with Europe. CIMC is pushing forward the transformation and upgrading of products and manufacturing in accordance with the development ideas of Made in China 2025, and moving in the direction of automation, intelligence, digitization and green development. Germany is promoting its Industry 4.0, and Italy is also implementing its Industry 4.0 National Plan. I think we will have deeper discussions with European peers. All major equipment manufacturing parts of CIMC expect such technical exchanges can bring us innovative ideas. We also expect the industrial design level of Italy can help us to produce high quality products, but also products that contain more fashionable elements.
SOURCE CIMC