In the recently held Qingdao Roundtable Meeting for European-invested Enterprises, representatives from a number of European businesses such as Maersk, AstraZeneca, Nestle, Danone, AtlasCopco and Air Liquide shared their insights of the present situation and outlook for the future, and signaled their continuous efforts to make investments and seek cooperation on a larger scale in Qingdao.

“After unremitting efforts of 25 years, our branch in Qingdao now boasts an annual output of more than 40,000 units of refrigerating equipment, surging from the initial 5,000 units.” Soren Johnson, CEO of Denmark Maersk Container Industry Co., Ltd. unveiled in the meeting these juicy data. Looking into the future, he said that they would continue to ratchet up investment, and spur product and technological innovations to roll out new products on a continual basis.

As a successful case of Swedish businesses investing in China, the Edwards vacuum pump project invested by Swedish AtlasCopco reported a year-on-year increase of 30% in revenue for 2023. Bram Claes, vice president of AtlasCopco, noted that the company, full of confidence for the future growth of Qingdao, would anticipate a growing number of graduates from colleges and universities in Qingdao and Shandong Province to join the ranks of their engineers and look forward to further step up investment in Qingdao.

Europe is hailed as an important trade partner and a significant source of investment for Qingdao. In 2023, the imports and exports between Qingdao and European countries totaled RMB 164.481 bln, up 9.2% on a year-on-year basis, the cumulative number of projects invested by Europe in Qingdao reached 1,568.

 (Liu Lanxing)

 Entrepreneurs from Europe make speeches one after another in the Qingdao Roundtable Meeting for European-invested Enterprises.