China General Interest
Shanghai Expo 2010 will be bigger and better than any before as befits holding it in a larger than life city such as Shanghai.
Organisers estimate that over 70 million people will visit the expo between May and November 2010 and New Zealand has secured a prime site for its pavilion designed to cope with as many as 14 million visitors.
“The World Expo in Shanghai will be an opportunity to show New Zealand to a massive market,” said Prime Minister Helen Clark, “We will look to showcase New Zealand as a progressive, dynamic, vibrant country with a natural environment second to none.”
New Zealand’s site – linked to the main walkway, adjacent to China’s own site and visible to virtually every visitor to the expo is a prime location.
New Zealand Trade and Enterprise has overall direction of the project. Phillip Gibson played an important role in New Zealand's success at the Aichi Expo in 2005 as Commissioner-General there and once again has been appointed to mastermind Shanghai Expo 2010. The director of the New Zealand Pavilion, Mike Pattison, is also a veteran of trade fairs and also played a similar role at Aichi in 2005.
Because of the estimates of traffic through the New Zealand pavilion, it will need to be double the size of that at Aichi to cope. This will mean an area of at least 2000 square metres.
NZCTA has earmarked Shanghai Expo as a hugely notable event and in fact our three year strategic plan is bookmarked by the FTA signing this year and the Expo in Year 3.
Strengthened as we are with a number of experienced China experts within our executive and wider membership, we will have an important role, acknowledged by the Commissioner General in conducting parties of New Zealand business people to the Expo between may and September that year.
In turn the Commissioner General has undertaken to host those parties and their local business contacts at the Expo, a Kiwi experience for the contacts, almost akin to being in New Zealand.
Already NZCTA and the Commissioner General have hosted (with generous assistance from Minter Ellison and Export New Zealand) three events in Auckland, Tauranga and Napier to brief business audiences on the potential and possibilities of Expo 2010.
We’ll now be planning our next steps both in promoting the event and assisting NZ business people to take full advantage of a very rare opportunity.
Watch out for further initiatives relating to the Expo.
Jun 24, 2008