A survey on an EU SMEs IBUonline is a B2B foreign trade platform which has helped many China suppliers and international

buyers. Now it conducted a survey on an EU SME company rather than China SMEs. Not so long ago, Thomas Pester, owner of Pester Pac Automation GmbH, a German packaging machine maker, would never have thought about expanding his 125-year-old family business to China, especially during difficult economic times. Now he is building a new plant in Shanghais Songjiang district, the only ot her plant outside his home market, to serve the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries in China and neighboring countries. Every company must find out for itself when and why to invest, Pester says. For us, a family-run business, its quick and easy to make decisions. It was made easier when Pester realized China was home to 5,000 pharmaceutical companies and the market remained one of the few bright spots for growth during the global economic downturn. Nowadays, European markets are largely saturated and have stagnated, which propelled us to look for new areas of growth. The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are definitely where new businesses would take place, he says. I would say the market access in China is much easie r today compared with 15 years ago when everything was a bit unknown and unexpected. You find yourselves better located, where the number of English speakers has picked up dramatically, and you find flights to China are more frequent than before. Pester Pac has supplied more than 7,000 film-wrapping, case-packing and palletizing machines to companies around the world, including Colgate-Palmolive Co and Johnson & Johnson Inc. Pester believes that the tide of investment has now turned in favor of smaller established European companies who, inspired by the success stories in China of their bigger counterparts, have been flexing their muscles on the side, awaiting their turn. IBU thinks such cooperation may bring more foreign trade business opportunities since there are some materials need to be delivered among different countries.