Westholland Foreign Investment Agency @ CEBIT

Yesterday myself and two colleagues jumped in the car to drive to Hannover for a visit of the CEBIT. CEBIT is world's foremost tradeshow for the digital industry. On the fair were several Dutch companies, however our aim was mainly to get in contact with companies from US / Asia and rest of Europe.

After a drive of 4 hours we arrived in the historica city of Hannover. We dropped our bags in the hotel and we went straight to the exhibition.

Our colleagues informed us about the size of the fair, so we were more or less prepared. However when we arrived there we found out that the fair was even bigger than our expectations. The first challenge was how to structure the visit as much as possible.

We found out that every hall had a specific theme (Green IT, IT & Finance, IT & Security, IT & Learning etc). So we all decided to focus on a specific region during the next three days. Personally I focused on the Japanese, Korean and Eastern European companies and I found out that The Netherlands had a very good reputation. Most of the companies already had business partners (especially distributors) in the Netherlands. However they were interested in finding more business partners in order to further develop their business in Europe. I met with a couple of companies that spoke with possible Dutch distributors (from Alphen a/d Rijn) during the last two days.

The Netherlands is well known for several matters, however some of them you might not expect. Until Guus Hiddink was coach of the South Korean football squad, Mr. Hendrik Hamel (1630 - 1692) was the most famous Dutch person in Korea. He was working for the VOC, which became famous for its travel reports and the only European sourch of information about Korea. Furthermore Mr. Yi Jun is a national hero in both North and South Korea. He died in 1907 in the City of The Hague when he wanted to attend the 2nd Hague Peace Conference. The former hotel where Yi Jun died, is nowadays turned into the Yi Jun Peace Museum.

Even though the Netherlands is well known, many companies were not aware of the favorable tax climate in our country and the fact that the company is ranked as the 4th knowledge economy of the world (according to the Worldbank).

Tomorrow will be the last day of the exhibition for us. Hereby some impressions of the fair: