Waynesboro seeks trade with China
WAYNESBORO — With more than 1.3 billion people and the second largest economy in the world, China is wooed by many.
Hopefully, they won't mind a little competition from Waynesboro.
Led by the Waynesboro Wanzhou Sister City Association, representatives from a dozen or more local businesses will make the nearly 7,000-mile trip to China in April for Virginia Week at the International Chongqing Garden Expo.
"This is not a garden show folks; this will absolutely blow your mind," said Linda Hershey, president and chief executive officer of the Greater Augusta Regional Chamber of Commerce, to a gathering of about two dozen interested parties at Barren Ridge Vineyards on Wednesday morning. "Realize that Waynesboro, Va., is up there with cities and countries from all over the world."
What started as a ceremonial designation of Wanzhou, China, as the sister city of Waynesboro, quickly grew into an international trade affair when a Chinese delegation visited the area in 2010.
R.E.O. Distribution, a Waynesboro-based logistics company, set up a foreign trade zone, a federally designated site that acts as a clearinghouse of sorts for goods shipped internationally. Waynesboro Councilman Mike Harris and Mayor Frank Lucente have both been on trade missions to China since, and the mayor even used the language training program Rosetta Stone to learn a bit of Chinese before heading over.
"The reception for us over there has been overwhelming," said Tom Sikes, general manager of R.E.O. Distribution. "They want to do business and build these relationships."
When Chongqing Province held its first garden expo last November, members of the local delegation were in awe. A $350,000 space had been constructed by the Chinese government for Valley businesses to show off their goods. Among the countries and cities represented, each with their own extravagant space, were just three American cities: Seattle, Houston and Waynesboro.
"It looks like a mini-Monticello," Sikes said of the 16,000-square-foot sheltered garden space.
"When China does something, boy, they really go after it," said John Higgs, owner of Barren Ridge Vineyards, who took part in the event which drew 86,000 visitors on opening day.
"Now that they have money and a rising middle class, they know it's a cultured product and they should respect it," Higgs said of selling his wine in the Chongqing Province, where Wanzhou is situated. "How well it's going to work out? How much business it's going to bring here to the Valley? We don't know, but at least we're trying."
Wanzhou is a growing industrial city, perhaps best-known for the construction of the Three-Gorges Dam, the largest power-generating station in the world which displaced more than 1 million people and submerged nearly half of Wanzhou's urban area. But it's trying to rebrand itself as a growing industrial and commercial city and is sometimes called China's "gateway to the West."
Wine tastings will be part of the lure to the Waynesboro garden space in April, as will other agriculture products such as Virginia peanuts. Local investors are confident there is a growing market for what the Valley has to offer.
"In order to remain competitive now you have to deal on a global basis," said Sikes.
"There is a real need there for agriculture and high-technology products, and wine," he said. "And we have some of the best of those products in the world."