CASES

Shanghai ChemPartner Co., Ltd.
Recognised research within biotech, a large undergrowth of small business and the possibility of an easy set-up. These were the three reasons that made the Chinese biotech company Shanghai ChemPartner Co., Ltd. decide to place its European headquarter in Copenhagen in November 2009. 

In record time, the company has become a leader within pre-clinical research and it has more than 1,500 science employees recruited in China including more than 125 senior researchers coming from Europe and USA.

Peter Halkjær-Knudsen was appointed Director of the Danish company, which was named ChemPartner Europe ApS. As such, Copenhagen is the Chinese gateway to the European market and the Danish company is to manage research projects from the European biotech industry, which are operated under contract by the parent company in China.

- The Chinese appreciate that the Danes are fast and efficient, and with a satellite office in Europe we now get a European company with direct access to the Chinese research competencies, which gets stronger every year. This is an area with enormous potential, because Europe today is in the shadow of the United States, where outsourcing of research is extremely widespread, Peter Halkjær-Knudsen, who has more than 20 years of experience in biotech companies worldwide, including San Diego in California, explains.

The choice of Denmark was an easy decision to make by the Chinese biotech company. Medicon Valley in Copenhagen is the third largest biotech cluster in Europe and offers a broad range of opportunities, whether you are a small start up business or a global player. Also, cooperation is widespread both amongst firms within the cluster as well as with the public reseach sector, both universities and large hospitals.

- It takes less than one day to establish a company in Denmark and the Danish labour market is renowned for its flexibility and exceptional cooperation between companies and the research sector. Combined with some of the best skills in the life science area, Medicon Valley offers a unique opportunity for Asian companies that would like to enter the European market, Peter Halkjær-Knudsen says.

ManRoland
Customers' needs came first when manroland this summer 2010 decided to centralise their Nordic printcom warehouse in Copenhagen. At the same time, manroland was able to expand their product portfolio and thereby offer customers more products and faster delivery.

When you need to be able to serve all of Scandinavia with day to day deliveries, it poses very high demands on logistics and inventory levels. However, high service requirements do not necessarily mean that a warehouse in every country is needed. On the contrary, one well-functioning, central warehouse can do the job, while at the same time reducing staff costs and warehouse rent, if one knows how to do it properly.

Together with Copenhagen Capacity, manroland, worldwide supplier for the printing industry, figured out how to do it right in regards to their Scandinavian activities. Manroland had warehouses in Norway, Sweden and Denmark and wanted to optimize their business without compromising customer needs.

- By centralising our warehouses, we could offer a broader range of products, because the products are more likely to be sold, when they are gathered in one place, which was also a great flaw in the smaller, decentralized warehouses. At the same time, our customers are accustomed to a high level of service and fast delivery, so
the challenge was therefore to centralise our activities without the customers noticing a difference. And we succeeded, Gitte Nielsen, Chief Financial Officer in manroland, says.

The decision to locate in Norway, Sweden or Denmark quickly became a choice between the latter two. Because Norway is not a member of the EU, there are some trade barriers, which make the flow of goods into and out of the country difficult. And since the Swedish customers are primarily located in Gothenburg and Stockholm and further south, they can fairly easily be reached from Copenhagen, from where the rest of Denmark also easily can be served, Copenhagen became the obvious choice.