Kouvola’s China Center continues to suffer from growing pains

Planned wholesale trade centre has mainly remained as collection of small retail shops

print this

The small piece of China in the Finnish city of Kouvola has not managed to attract as much businesses as had been hoped.
     According to the owner, currently around 70 businesses with ties to China operate in the wholesale and shopping emporium called the Nordic China Center. This is less than half of what had been anticipated.
     Furthermore, the centre is about to get a competitor: the city of Vantaa is on the final stretch with negotiations over erecting a China Centre in the city’s Veromies district, just south of the Helsinki-Vantaa International Airport.
     The plans for Vantaa’s China Centre include exhibition, congress, and office space, and a hotel. The venue would include sales offices of Chinese companies as well as a point of support for their European operations, which benefit greatly from the proximity of good flight connections.
     
The owner of Kouvola’s Nordic China Center Jiazhu Wang is not overly concerned about the slower-than-anticipated start to the operation.
     “In a new market area success takes time”, Wang says.
     According to Sirkku Seila, the managing director of the City of Kouvola business organisation Yritysmagneetti, the China Center has strayed far from its original idea of wholesale trading.
     “In the early stages the emphasis slipped too far to the retail side. In Finland there is no future in that. We already have enough retailers”, Seila reckons.
     
On an average weekday a couple of dozen people stroll on the isles of the centre. The shops offer articles from traditional porcelain and silk clothes to deck chairs and plastic flowers rocked by an electric motor.
     It is easy to conclude what is the attraction with these shops: a pair of shoes costs seven euros, a pair a jeans six euros. A pair of suspenders is available for two euros.
     Ulla-Mari Vihavainen of Imatra says that she has found certain products being sold here for prices that are only a fraction of what similar stuff costs elsewhere. On the other hand, the quality is not necessarily convincing.
     “How should I put it? There is a lot of stuff here, the quality of which is not extremely high”, Vihavainen explains.
     There is also much vacant commercial space within the centre. Even a shop with a sign that reads “open” is actually closed.
     
The owner Wang admits that the current recession is reflected in the lower customer figures and has caused some businesses to disappear.
     Then again, the Nordic China Center is doing far better than a planned huge wholesale centre in Kalmar, Sweden.
     There the Chinese undertaking quickly landed in financial difficulties and a new owner is now being sought for the huge building complex.
     According to Wang the aim is to continue conducting the wholesale trade of Chinese products from the Kouvola centre.
     
Kouvola’s China Center was launched a year and a half ago in the premises of a former dairy.
     The owner firm Nordic China Center rents out space for the use of other companies.
     The firm chose Kouvola because of its convenient location. The St. Petersburg market across the border is not far, and the Trans-Siberian Railway facilitates a direct rail link all the way to China.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Chinatown rises in Kouvola (30.5.2006)
  China Center in Kouvola opens today (20.9.2007)
  Bulk of guests invited to attend Kouvola China Week denied visas to enter Finland (14.6.2007)

Links:
  Vantaa going ahead with plans for China Centre in Veromies district (17.3.2009)

Helsingin Sanomat