Association for Foreign Investment

2009/10/05, The supplier Opportunity Forum organised by CzechInvest and the Association for Foreign Investment featured the attendance of five large investors and a score of potential suppliers

Thanks to today's Supplier Opportunity Former, a score of Czech suppliers - predominantly small and medium-size enterprises - have received orders with an estimated total value of between 100 and 150 million crowns. The German firm Automotive Lighting, Ingersoll-Rand of the United States and a trio of Japanese companies - Daikin, Daido and Toyoda Gosei - attended the event, which was organised by CzechInvest in cooperation with the Association for Foreign Investment, in order to present their requirements for components purchasing.

"Today's event is focused primarily on mechanical-engineering companies that are at least somewhat involved in the automotive industry. Because of the global economic downturn, such companies' turnover has declined by twenty to thirty percent, and therefore we want to help them," says Alexandra Rudyšarová, CEO of CzechInvest, explaining the purpose of the Supplier Opportunity Forum.

"CzechInvest's AfterCare Department, which looks after the needs of investors operating in the Czech Republic, selected five companies that are currently looking for new suppliers. Based on their requirements, we chose about twenty Czech firms that have something to offer them. The investors then gave the potential suppliers a detailed presentation of their requirements, and space was set aside for personal meetings. Based on experience from similar events in the past, I would estimate that orders worth roughly 120 million crowns will be concluded thanks to today's event. Furthermore, most of the invited companies are among the most innovative in their respective sectors in the Czech Republic," adds Vít Švajcr, director of the Supplier Development Department at CzechInvest.

"Standard trade fairs are set up in such a way that suppliers have to rent expensive exhibition spaces for their own stands, at which they engage with buyers from large companies. At the Supplier Opportunity Forum, on the other hand, suppliers and large companies can choose in advance whom they want to engage in personal meetings. Thus we save time and costs, and the meetings in particular are very successful," says Milan Pátek, director of CzechInvest's AfterCare Department.

"This event is unique in that it combines aftercare for large foreign investors with CzechInvest's services for small and medium-size Czech suppliers," says Michal Stieber, director of the Investment Project Management Section at CzechInvest.

CzechInvest last organised a similar event in 2008 for the German automotive firm Karman. Suppliers that accepted invitations to today's event include Tesla Jihlava, Rogum, Avon Automotive, RAY Service, Linaset, Letoplast, Lukov Plast, CZ plast, Savea, Kasko, Zálesí, OLZA, Omnipack, Drop-Press, Ljunghall, H.L.F, TVD and Belis. Besides seeking new orders, representatives of these firms can attend a series of presentations organised by companies from the ranks of AFI members with topics relating to the current global economic downturn. Investors and their counterparts among the suppliers can thus become familiar with current trends in, for example, currency-risk management and assurances in commercial relationships, and can also receive information on how to proceed when a customer is insolvent. The media partners of the event are the weekly publications Profit and Czech Business Weekly from the publisher Stanford.