Kurt E Sieber – President, Austrian Business Council
The Austrian Business Council (ABC) likes to do things that nobody else does. This year, it plans to make a sizeable donation to support education and revitalisation efforts in disaster-affected areas of Tohoku. “The focus is on providing inhabitants who have lost their livelihoods with training opportunities for employment in new industries, such as renewables,” says ABC President Kurt Sieber. “We should give hope and means to people who have decided to remain in the affected areas and to rebuild their hometowns.”
This undertaking, many details of which are yet to be finalised, will be not only the ABC’s biggest project for 2012, but also “probably the biggest single project that we have ever contributed to,” says Sieber. The chamber also undertakes a number of charitable activities, including support for an orphanage in Shinagawa.
As a relatively small organisation, with about 50 corporate members, the ABC increases its leverage through cooperation with other organisations, particularly the European Business Council (EBC) and the local chambers of other German-speaking nations. In addition, the ABC is strongly connected to the Austrian Embassy Commercial Section, and the Commercial Counsellor acts as ABC executive director.
The four key activities in 2011 and this year, says Sieber, involve “areas in which Austria has leading technologies and can offer a real advantage to the Japanese industries concerned.” One such area is timber and forestry. “There is a whole range of products and technologies – all the way from wood to producing energy from biomass,” Sieber explains. “Then there is forestry cultivation and harvesting – technology, machinery and management.” Accordingly, more than 100 Japanese forestry experts attended the AUSTROFOMA forestry exhibition last October near the Austrian city of Graz.
Austria also produces advanced construction materials for eco-friendly housing. At last year’s Ecobuild Fair in Tokyo there was strong interest in Austrian insulation materials and an Austrian region around the town of Guessing, of 5,000 people, that is 100% energy independent by means of a combination of alternative energy sources.
Austria also had the largest booth at Mass-trans Innovation Japan 2011, in November at Makuhari Messe. “Few people realise that Austria is very strong in the field of railroads – especially track laying and maintenance,” notes Sieber. The ABC also supports events and activities related to “what every European country is proud of – specialty foods and beverages, particularly organic products”.
It is not all about direct promotion of business, however. Sieber points out that one of the main objectives of the ABC is to provide networking opportunities for its members. In collaboration with the EBC, the chamber also gathered material to support the current EU-Japan scoping exercise, which aims to set the agenda for broader economic partnership negotiations.
“There are also many business education events, also in cooperation with other chambers,” Sieber adds. Typical themes are legal issues, human resources and the annual “Delighting Customers in Japan”, hosted by the Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce in Japan. Helped by networking within the Austrian and European business community, the membership trend is positive. “We have more companies and individuals joining than resigning,” says Sieber. Austria is also famous as one of the world’s leading music centres, and though orchestral events are not handled by the ABC, he says: “[Music] gives us a lot to talk about. The first thing you have to explain is that Austria is not Australia. The second is that it has not only Mozart. Austria also has very vibrant industries.”