A municipal trade trip to China, expected to take place on the weekend, has been pushed back.
Michael Burton, Chatham-Kent’s director of economic development is leading the local delegation, and said he received a call late Thursday night from China asking him to reschedule.
He anticipates the group will instead leave later this month.
Burton said the original plan was to leave on the weekend and be there for nine days.
He said the delegation was also to include municipal economic development officer Suzanne Brown, representatives from a couple of Ontario companies, and a Toronto-based consultant. There is no council representation on this trip.
Once in China, Burton said a provincial trade representative who is headquartered at the Canadian Embassy in Beijing, will be on hand for several of the meetings.
“We are taking people to specifically work out details on various projects,” Burton said.
He added some of the meetings are deep into the negotiation process.
“Some of these discussions are getting down to the short strokes. In two instances, that’s the case. For a third, there is an extremely high level of interest. They asked us to get over as soon as we can,” Burton said.
Burton said this will be the fourth C-K trade mission to China overall, and the first this year.
He declined to say what type of business is being courted.
“Everyone else would be at the door,” he said of his reasoning.
He did say there are two projects up for discussion. One pitch is to two companies, and if successful would employ about 350 people. Another could potentially see 100 jobs created.
“In one of these cases, I think in about six to eight weeks, we’ll know if we have a deal or to scrap the idea.”
Burton said there’s a reason these types of deals don’t happen in a heartbeat.
“We are dealing with big dollars and big companies,” he said. “We’re talking to companies, asking them to literally invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a different part of the world. This doesn’t happen overnight. People kind of forget that for a bit.
“It takes one hell of a lot of analysis, convincing and salesmanship to convince someone to invest that kind of money.”
