The world’s market leader in the aseptic packing industry, Hong Kong based GreatView opens a gigantic production facility near Leipzig and creates 120 jobs. GreatView’s corporate language at its Leipzig plant is English: The Chinese company ‘GreatView’ has set up an aseptic packaging facility near Leipzig at the Autobahn A14. GreatView is the international market leader in the packaging industry and the company is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Plant manager Stefan Mayer says that there are two reasons why GreatView chose Leipzig as its European location.
First of all, Leipzig is situated in the heart of Europe and has an excellent logistics infrastructure. In addition, you can find a large pool of qualified employees who will contribute to GreatView’s European growth. It goes without saying the production costs in Leipzig are higher than at GreatView’s headquarters in Hong Kong. However, the increased production costs are easily compensated by much higher sales prices in Europe.
GreatView’s Leipzig facility is a 13,000 square meter operation where two robots are churning out aseptic packaged products around the clock. The plant has now 100 local employees for the test phase and 20 more will be recruited once the operation reaches its full capacity. What’s most interesting from English-Team’s perspective is the fact that the corporate language at GreatView’s Leipzig plant is English rather than German. CEO Stefan Mayer says that his Chinese colleagues provide constant support via daily video conferences. His receptionist, Xin Zhou speaks three languages: Chinese, English and German.
The GreatView Leipzig project is only the beginning of a process that I would call ‘reversed globalization’. In the near future, more and more Chinese companies will set up European operations in and around Leipzig to get direct access to the German consumer and B2B market.