In the middle of a vast, hangar-like space on a tropical island in the South China Sea on Saturday, stewards linked hands to control the crowd surrounding a replica Norman castle. This was the official opening of the Irish pavilion at the China International Consumer Products Expo in Haikou, where Ireland is guest of honour this year.
Haikou is the capital of the island province of Hainan, which China is developing as a free trade port with generous tax breaks for business and more flexible regulations. The city is also home to the biggest duty-free mall in the world and Hainan’s duty free shopping was of particular interest to Tom Keightley from St Patrick’s Distillery in Cork.“A lot of the business won’t be done at the show. It’s the introductions that are done at the show,” he said.
“China is not cheap any more, but China’s quality has increased 200 per cent or 300 per cent. They have brought up the quality of the standard for export so that that they’re able to compete on quality, and price-wise they’re still able to compete,” he said. Tim Crowe first worked in China many years ago when he set up a supply chain for Dell to build desktop computers to sell to Europe and the United States. It was the experience of seeing the problems that arose in factories that inspired him and others to set up the software company WrxFlo.