Midlands Engine heads to Hangzhou Cultural and Creative Industry Expo

The Midlands Engine has established a strong partnership with Zhejiang Province, one of China’s largest and most affluent regions. This relationship was initiated by Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County Council and has been scaled up to the Midlands Engine region in order to widen commercial connections. The key focus of the mission is to boost trade and investment links.

With a population larger than London, Hangzhou (Zhejiang’s capital), is a key cultural and historic hub in China. The Hangzhou Cultural and Creative Industry Expo has been running for over a decade. The expo ranks in the top four cultural industry events in China’s calendar and attracts significant international attention.

Last year several Midlands’ businesses attended the event with a very positive outcome: 14 Midlands based businesses and organisations attended, made valuable sales and established trade links with China. This year, Zhejiang are offering sponsorship for Midlands Engine businesses to attend the event again to build more connections. It is hoped that this visit will just be the start of many more commercially focused Creative and Cultural exchanges.

“The mission itself has been invaluable to us, it provided us a great opportunity to showcase our brand and products in China, allowed us to test our product and pricing structure and gave me the opportunity to understand how we can approach and enter the Chinese market efficiently and effectively.”

Grace and Dotty

DIT have created opportunities to build the potential links with local Chinese businesses. Zhejiang has allocated funding to support more SMEs, to connect and communicate. Through the Hangzhou Creative and Design Centre, Zhejiang have committed to support as follows:

Fully fund the opportunity (Flights, and accommodation are covered) for 5 Midlands based SMEs from the creative and design industry to travel to the Expo
Partly fund the opportunity (Accommodation is covered) for 5 Midlands based SMEs from the creative and design industry to travel to the Expo
More than 200m2 free exhibition space for all Midlands delegates at the Hangzhou Cultural and Creative Industry Expo – this will be including space design, construction and basic expo facilities

This year the following businesses from Nottingham have been sent on the trade mission:

1. Shinyu studio - https://www.shinyustudio.com

2. Grace and Dotty - https://www.graceanddotty.com

3. The School of Artisan Food - https://www.schoolofartisanfoo...

4. G. H. Hurt & Son - https://www.ghhurt.com

5. Hino Travel Limited - http://www.hinotravel.com

6. Montana Shop - https://montanashop.co.uk

7. Debbie Bryan - https://debbiebryan.co.uk

The Expo is being held 19th to the 23rd of September and we wish the team the best of luck in their business endeavours.