Road to Olympic glory

There’s more to Beijing than just sport - there’s big business, too.

The Beijing Olympic Games are just four weeks away, but there is still work to do, right here in Queensland.

There’s fruit that needs picking in the Central Burnett, flight instructors needed at Warwick on the Darling Downs, and macadamias to be packed on the Sunshine Coast - wait, scrap that, they don’t want macadamias any more.

Dealing with a communist Asian supergiant on the eve of the biggest sporting event in the world is difficult at best. But it’s worth persisting.

With financial forecasters shifting their focus from America to China as the economic leader of the future, and with exports to China now accounting for 13 per cent of total exports, China means jobs, and well-paying jobs at that.

According to the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade), one in five Australian jobs is currently in export and exporters pay 60 per cent higher wages than non-exporters.

For the Beijing Olympics, 40 Australian companies have won contracts to help build, feed, consult, and entertain during the 16-day Games, contracts which will lead to future industry job growth, as demonstrated by the growth of investment following the Sydney Olympics.

The Australian Government’s Business Club Australia (BCA) has generated $1.7 billion worth of trade and investment deals since its inception at the Sydney Olympic Games.

BCA’s trade mission to Beijing during the Olympics is expected to significantly add to this, bringing Australian and Chinese government and industry leaders together for a five-day schmooze at the Beijing Hilton.

“Nothing can compare to an Olympics (in business exposure), not in two weeks,” says Austrade chief economist Tim Harcourt.

“The Olympics is a great way to get a head start for small business.

“Construction, architecture and logistics will be big winners out of the Olympics, and with this climate change issue there is also a big emphasis at the Olympics on water reticulation and energy saving and we are helping with that too.”

Pioneering Australian steel manufacturer BlueScope Steel has been integral in building the Olympic dream, using energy efficient and environmentally friendly systems.

BlueScope Steel’s Lysaght division, with 430 staff, has helped build some of the major sporting venues, including a large part of the roof on the 60,000-seat Tianjin Olympic Centre Stadium where Australia plays Cote D’Ivoire in the football on August 13, as well as the National Fencing and National Swimming training centres.

Lysaght president Tim Lefebvre says the company’s Olympic involvement and interest in iconic public building projects could lead to other international contracts and he is hopeful of some involvement in the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

“There’s never a shortage of construction activity, it’s a wonderful market to be in,” Lefebvre says.

“You have to understand the Chinese way of doing business and there’s lots of competition. Like any market, you’ve got to fight for business with your good products and services and good people.”

And you have to know how to work within the Chinese culture.

Lefebvre has been working in China since 2000, takes Chinese language lessons once a week, and early on he had a friend work out a Chinese equivalent of his name.

“I have a Chinese name, Fei Le Tian. It is a contraction of my name. It means ‘happy to the sky’ and Chinese put a very strong importance on the name and its good meaning. And I’m a fairly happy guy and I feel that there is a connection there through having a Chinese name.”

BlueScope Steel has several programs running with Australian universities to recruit firstly to Australia, and then China.

“For our business, we’ve got requirements for engineers, particularly civil and structural engineers to work not only in the Lysaght business but across our three divisions,” he says.

“Engineers are always in demand and of course finance is a discipline that we always demand; an understanding of Australian reporting requirements and the Australian culture, as we are importing into Australia.”

In the Central Burnett, Barry Scott, general manager of the Gayndah Packers Co-operative Association Ltd, says the Gaypak brand is exporting to China as part of normal operations, but fruit-pickers will be required early in the midseason if there is any chance of getting fruit to Beijing.

“Are we sending to China? Yes. Is our fruit going to be involved in the Olympics? I don’t know. We do have an importer who claims to be the official Olympic Games importer for citrus. But I believe that is probably a story.”

Scott says he expects to find out in the next week or so whether Gayndah, the orange capital of Queensland, will be supplying to the Beijing Olympics.

“We’re in the middle of the midseason varieties at the moment. But all of the citrus is a bit early this year because we got good rain in December. The Murcotts (mandarins) are coming to maturity earlier than normal but not in large volumes, but we will need fruit pickers two weeks earlier this year, from mid-July.”

Three hundred macadamia farmers on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast put aside old rivalries to form a united company to export wasabe and abalone-flavoured macadamias to the Games with Austrade assistance.

But three weeks ago, Suncoast Gold Macadamias and the Macadamia Processing Company realised they were being given the cold shoulder.

Suncoast sales manager Jeremy Roberts says Chinese distribution disruptions and problems getting food products accepted and cleared through customs have now made it impossible for the company to fulfil the deal, ending a 12-month plan.

“For China, we entered into a joint venture with our competitor. China is a greenfield site for us, we were going to be knocking on the same doors after all.

“But over the last couple of weeks - they never say no - but their enthusiasm wasn’t there. We got the impression we weren’t high on their priority list.”

While this hasn’t cost immediate jobs, the leverage Queensland’s macadamia industry would have gained from attending trade talks in Beijing as part of the deal, has now been lost.

“We’ve been told it’s too hard during the Olympics, so we’re going to take some time off and have another look when things have settled.”

There is no doubt Australian business is working hard to grow opportunities with China in the lead-up to the Olympics.

But learning the Chinese way of doing business, the “guanxi”, will require time, patience, and perhaps a little cunning.

We are, after all, dealing with a nation that has been trading a few thousand years longer than our Federation of Australia.

FACTS

• More than 40 Australian companies have won more than 50 Olympics-related contracts


• Last year more than 4000 Australian companies exported goods to China


• China accounts for almost 13 per cent of all Australian exports


• Exporters pay 60 per cent higher wages than non-exporters


• Exporters create one in five jobs in Australia


• China is now Australia’s largest two-way trading partner


• Total trade with China in 2007 grew 15 per cent to $58 billion


• In Queensland, more than 46,000 people speak one of the Chinese languages, mostly Mandarin, the language studied by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

The Courier-Mail, July 12, 2008