I’ve been to China! November 2008. What a wonderful experience. The thing that struck me most is that the people want to learn so much. Whether they’re mopping the floor in the hotel or serving in a restaurant. Priva has had an office in China for five years. Our Maarten went over there. We were already doing business in China, but it seemed a good idea to have an office and a presence there.

Anyway, for the first three years you need to build relationships with the Chinese. They wait for three years and if you have not left yet, they want to do some more business with you. However, after five years the turnover is still not much higher then €100,000 per year. We do business, but most of the revenue comes from Korea and Japan.

Training for Chinese workers
I became acquainted with Zhou, from Dushi Green, our dealer in China for many years. We exchanged business cards. Since last November I have been seeking funding for a project in China. There is a greenhouse in China in an area where Chinese farmers can be trained in both open and covered agricultural cultivation. There are no large-scale investments in high-tech systems yet, because they have not been able to grow more than 30 kilos of crops per m2. And so it is not yet profitable for the time being. Apart from a few exceptions.

The subsidy that you can receive is covered by the program “Growth for China”, but this program only gives money for exporting hardware. Exactly what the Chinese like to imitate themselves. Five to seven parties are willing to work together for the next two years on a project where we will develop a market to show the Chinese people that it is possible. That means learning to produce remotely. Giving direction from the Netherlands with the help of local staff. Just show that you can produce more per m2 as sustainably as possible. We are taking our knowledge of ground storage with us. In addition to that, there is a design for the first innovation for a solar greenhouse, where the Chinese have a kind of minimum pipe in their simple greenhouse, leading to more production and better quality.

Paying for knowledge
Helping develop a market to a level at which it becomes really interesting for the Dutch sector costs time and money. Creating integrated value, in which all facets become encrypted as part of an overall concept, makes each part difficult to copy separately. The Chinese government wants to invest, but do not want to pay for knowledge. Encrypt that knowledge in the hardware you bring over. That is tangible. But the Netherlands wants the receipts for the purchased hardware, and also does not want to pay for knowledge. We are a knowledge economy, but when it comes to exporting knowledge or starting a local training center, no one is home …