The Orient express

Lauren Kramer | Image: Corbis/Maxx Images | Published: July 01, 2008

With the construction of a $14.7-million B.C.-Canada House Pavilion underway in Beijing, several of B.C.’s trade associations are assembling their delegations and hoping to expand BC business in China, using the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a convenient springboard.

“China is clearly an emerging market for us, and this is a very good opportunity to kick down a few doors and learn more about it,” says Pascal Spothelfer, president and CEO of the B.C. Technology Industry Association (BCTIA). The BCTIA hopes to be joined in Beijing by representatives from about 30 companies – 15 representing information and communication technologies and 15 representing clean-energy technology.

“We’ve had a fair amount of interest and we’re full up,” says Spothelfer. At present only two per cent of B.C.’s overall technology products are exported to China, he notes, and though it’s not a big market today, it will certainly become one in the future. “The Olympics gives us an opportunity to draw attention to B.C., to allow our companies to present themselves in a different light and to get business contacts they wouldn’t otherwise get,” says Spothelfer. “If we have the spotlight, let’s use it and maximize the return. This is a great marketing opportunity.”

Vancouver-based Westport Innovations Inc. (WPT-T), a developer of environmental technologies that allow engines to operate on clean-burning fuels, has had a presence in China since 2001. That’s when it partnered with U.S.-based Cummins Inc. (CMI-N) to create Cummins Westport, a company that manufactures and sells low-emission alternative-fuel engines for commercial transportation.

“We have 17,000 engines on the road today, the majority in buses, and our single largest customer has been Beijing Public Transit,” says Jonathan Burke, vice-president of corporate development.

In 2006 Westport forged a second partnership, this time with Beijing Tianhai Industry Co., an Asian manufacturer of pressurized cylinders for carrying industrial gases. “We focused on China because it’s become one of the world’s fastest-growing markets for heavy-duty diesel trucks and heavy-duty bus applications,” Burke says. “Its diesel vehicles are one of the largest sources of urban pollution, and, since we offer a low-emissions alternate-fuel technology using natural gas, it seemed like a perfect fit.” Burke says the 2008 Beijing Olympics has certainly helped fuel Westport’s business in China, though a correlation between the two has never been explicitly mentioned. “We do know that a tremendous amount of pressure was put on the Beijing government regarding air quality concerns and

a clean environment, related to both the Olympics and the world’s focus on China.”

B.C.’s forestry sector is one industry that has been active in China for many years now. “We did some work there in the 1980s,” says Paul Newman, director of the Canada Wood Group. “We built three demonstration houses and did initial legwork with government authorities and academics.” The military crackdown at Tiananmen Square halted this work, causing a decade-long stall that was only broken in 2000. Today the Canada Wood Group has offices in Shanghai and Beijing with a total of 16 employees on the ground in China. The association’s work is focused on the use of wood in remanufacturing. “A lot of Canada’s wood products are flowing into Chinese factories and facilities that cut it down, reassemble it and use it for products in the country and for exports,” explains Newman. “The focus of a lot of our work is to create construction opportunities for our wood in that market – from outdoor landscaping to wood-frame homes to hybrid construction of wood.”