Companies eye Middle East opportunities

Despite increased competition in the booming Gulf Arab construction market, Chinese representatives told the media at The Big 5, the biggest annual Middle East construction fair which was held from Nov 17 to 21, that they still see potential for more business in the region.

According to Citigroup, the value of construction projects underway or in the pipeline in the six Gulf states has reached $1.67 trillion. Mega cities and skyscrapers are built on desert spots and man-made islands to prepare for the time when oil runs out one day.

In Saudi Arabia alone, there is an excess demand for five million homes, and Chinese firms are keen on grabbing a share from the growing cake, although competition is fierce, said Zee Qian, international sales manager at Wuxi Weihua Machinery Company from Wuxi, Jiangsu province.

Speaking at the annual exhibition, Qian said the firm exhibited at the fair for the second time.

"We have no office yet in Dubai, but this can change soon as opportunities in the Middle East are huge although the segment for construction machineries is most competitive," he said.

While Wuxi Weihua Machinery has already clients in the region, "we find The Big 5 Fair very useful to market our products and we had a good amount of visitors and potential clients".

Wuxi Weihua is one of 594 Chinese firms that participated in this year's fair.

Vivian Song, overseas regional manager at elevator producer Winone Elevator Corp in Foshan, Guangdong province, said that Winone was exhibiting for the first time at the Big 5. "We won a deal in the Arabian city project in Dubai and we would like to expand in the region. But we must do more to promote our brand as we think our elevators are better not only in price but also in quality," said Song.

She said that exporting elevators was not that easy as sometimes countries ask for different certificates in relation to voltage used to operate a lift or in relation to security.

Leading elevator makers like Schindler Group of Switzerland, Thyssen-Krupp from Germany or Japan's Mitsubishi are controlling the market in the Gulf Arab region. Winone plans to list its shares at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in two years, the legal steps for an initial public offering have already been taken.

Iris Wu, sales person at Good Use Hardware Company from Kaohsiung in Taiwan, which is at the fair for the third time, said her firm was aware of rivalry but "fixing glue for the construction industry is based on our unique patent in the sector and we want to use The Big 5 to tell this to potential customers".

Chinese firms not only want to explore the market for housing, industry machinery and pipeline construction, some of them also aim to come up with innovation.

"We found that most houses in the Gulf region have marble or stone floors, so we see a niche market for bamboo floors," said Landy Fan, sales representative at bamboo innovator Dasso from Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

So far, Fan said, Dasso has only clients in Qatar and Egypt but it aims to spread its businesses to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Iran.