Wednesday, March 15, 2006

The Chinese are Coming!

“The GE of China was looking at us. We couldn’t believe that we were competing with a place in Connecticut and Orlando, Florida.” Nelson Lindsay, head of ED for Camden, SC was explaining to me about how they landed Haier into one of their three industrial parks. The company bought 110 acres, built one large warehouse and has plans to eventually develop a campus like environment for their other industrial companies. They also plan to begin doing much of their R&D in Camden.

The first Haier project in the USA is the production of household appliances. The company imports components from China, doing final assembly in Camden in addition to manufacturing appliances in the town.

Haier is another important trend that you’ll want to follow in the future. There will be more foreign companies like them from China, India and other countries that will want to establish more of a presence in the USA. Being close to a port for “Strip and Ship” and component assembly operations could be keys to recruiting these companies to your community. What are you doing to begin marketing to these companies…to let them know where you are on the map?

No comments: