New appointments at Bavarian representations in Tokyo und Qingdao

Zeil: “Bavaria is excellently networked worldwide”

MUNICH As of 1 March, the State of Bavaria will have new representatives in Japan and China. Bavaria’s Minister of Economic Affairs, Martin Zeil, commented: “Our longstanding chief representative in Japan, Toshio Obata, is retiring at the end of February for age reasons. Mr. Obata and his deputy Miho Saeki deserve great credit for their contribution to business relations between Japan and Bavaria. In the last five years alone, they were able to successfully support over 60 new Japanese firms in Bavaria in close cooperation with Invest in Bavaria.”

The new Bavarian representative in Japan will be Dr. Christian Geltinger. He has spent more than three years in Qingdao, China as the chief representative of the State of Bavaria. The task of the new Bavarian representative in Japan will be to encourage Japanese companies to set up facilities in Bavaria and to help Bavarian companies establish themselves on the Japanese market. Economics Minister Zeil will be visiting Japan in mid-November with a delegation of entrepreneurs and experts. Zeil: “We also want to promote technological cooperation between Bavarian and Japanese firms. The new Japanese Government has signalled its intention to facilitate access to the internal Japanese market by reducing trade barriers. This will increase the opportunities for small and medium-sized Bavarian enterprises to gain a foothold on the Japanese market.” Zeil intends to promote investment by Japanese companies in Bavaria. He continued to say that 280 Japanese companies were already taking advantage of the favourable opportunities for producing or marketing their products in Bavaria.

The new representative in China as of 1 March will be Manuel Rimkus, who has worked in the field of business development in the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs. He can draw on the experience of a well-coordinated team of Chinese employees in Qingdao in the Bavarian partner province of Shandong: “With our current total of 20 representatives, Bavaria can boast a strong presence all round the world. We offer our small and medium-sized companies free and efficient help with gaining access to the market and promote foreign investments in Bavaria. No other German state is anywhere near as well networked worldwide as we are at the moment. We intend to maintain and further improve this competitive edge. I will be opening our 21st representative office at Istanbul in Turkey this coming March”, Zeil added.