Trade Council Bangkok on Denmark tour

The Commercial Counsellor at the Embassy of Denmark, Bangkok, Mr Peter Sand, was back in Denmark in early April meeting with design companies, discussing wireless speakers, wastewater management and much in between!

The Head of the trade section also met with representatives from both the Danish Agriculture & Food Council and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration to discuss two inspections that Thai authorities plan to carry out in Denmark within the next year in order to allow for a continued export of various types of Danish livestock.

All parties agreed to work together on this important project, reports the Embassy of Denmark in Bangkok.

“It is of great importance to us to secure access to the Thai market for us in those fields,” said Jan Laustsen Director of Danish Agriculture & Food Council.

“The embassy looks forward to collaborating on the project and on preparing and carrying out the inspections.”

One of the companies Peter Sand met with was Windelev, a Danish family-owned company founded in 1960 by Jørgen Windelev providing high quality dry-offset printing plates for the packaging industry. Jørgen’s daughter was recently appointed as new Managing Director.

Windelev indeed wishes to expand and grow and this may well mean looking further into Thailand and potentially also the Philippines as its future markets. As a result, Louise will consider whether to apply for a Vitus-program or whether to use other incentive schemes providing subsidies for SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises)

The Vitus-program is a very comprehensive export program of the Trade Council for SMEs much like Windelev.

“I certainly don’t want to exclude that we start working with the Trade Council in the very near future,” said Louise Windelev.

Green-Jakobsen, is another company, specialized in safety, leadership and HR in the maritime industry, that Peter met with. Green-Jakobsen can deliver the full course of development – from analysis to process planning and implementation.

Obtaining a preliminary analysis of the potential in Thailand would make sense to us, said Erik Green, Managing Director at Green-Jakobsen, who expressed an interest in favour of gathering a group of companies for a market visit to Thailand.

The Commercial Counsellor also visited Rasmus Holscher, CEO of Holscher Design, a leading Scandinavian design agency, to discuss market opportunities in Thailand. The meeting took place at Holscher’s premises being the historical factory site of the former Laurids Knudsens mechanical establishment.

Rasmus said: “Thailand appears to be an attractive market and we would like to look into how the Embassy in Bangkok can assist us in identifying customers within the lightning and outdoor segments.”

“Bringing Holscher Design to the Thai market would be a major achievement and we hope to be working closely with Rasmus and his colleagues to deliver on this target,” commented Peter Sand.

Another stop was to ISS and a meeting with Kenth Kærhøg, Senior Vice President at ISS, who is a key account with the Trade Council and for whom Peter is the Key Account Manager. The meeting was one of several yearly meetings that Kenth and Peter carry out to coordinate the cooperation between the Trade Council and ISS.

“It is a good opportunity to take stock of our cooperation and to assign priorities,” said Kenth Kærhøg, who also stressed the importance of discussing ISS participation in official Danish export promotions in the future.

Peter expressed hope to find more areas of cooperation between ISS and the Trade Council being identified.

Also, in Viborg Peter met with Vifa, a Danish supplier of very well-designed and wireless speakers. Vifa uses Kvadrat’s design textiles as an important element of the product.

Vifa certainly sees a potential in Thailand and presently discusses a co-operation with a potential distributor, said Ole Bergstein, Sales Director at Vifa.

Peter presented the portfolio of services that can be offered by the Embassy, and Ole stressed the need for keeping in a close contact going forward.

Peter also met with Vand Center Syd (VCS), an organization that offers training programs in a wide range of topics within water and wastewater management. VCS also supports larger Danish consultancy engineering companies focusing on water at foreign markets.

Henrik Werchmeister, Director at VCS and Thomas Abildgaard Jørgensen, project manager, underlined that Thailand deserves being looked into and that VCS would be very interested in being introduced to larger water utility companies in Thailand. Also, VCS wanted to look into the idea of having a small group of water companies participating in a market visit to Thailand.

The Trade Council is the export and investment organisation within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their office at the Royal Danish Embassy in Bangkok promotes trade and investment between Denmark, Thailand and Cambodia by assisting Danish companies with partner searches, CSR reports, contact to key decision makers and much more.

Source: Embassy of Denmark, Bangkok

About Joakim Persson

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