Kitchener mayor part of group in Germany trying to drum up new business

Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic has joined Communitech and Waterloo EDC on a business development mission in Germany.

This is part of the City’s and Region’s efforts to attract and grow economic investment in a number of industries, including the technology and advanced manufacturing sectors.

“The team from Waterloo Economic Development Corporation and our own cities economic development department, for meeting with a number of companies that either have a presence in Waterloo Region and they are potentially looking at expanding or new companies that have an interest in doing more business in Canada,” said Mayor Berry Vrbanovic.

In a two-part mission that will incorporate a series of meetings in five German cities, Mayor Vrbanovic began the first phase of his business development mission by joining Communitech’s Steve Currie and attending Startupnight, one of Europe’s largest startup events, where startups present themselves to corporations, investors and potential customers.

The next several days will focus on tours of Berlin’s startup ecosystem, with leaders from Communitech and its digital innovation labs.

The delegation will meet with corporations and innovation leaders like Deutsche Telekom, Porsche, SAP and Deloitte.

Vrbanovic says “missions like this are extremely important because number one is we get a sense of what’s happening in other major jurisdictions that we are competing with globally, I mean Berlin has really moved up in the start-ups rankings in the last few years.”

German investment accounts for ten per-cent of all foreign investment in Waterloo region and it is directly responsible for approximately 35 businesses and thousands of jobs in our community.

Erwin Hymer, a German company that purchased Kitchener based company RoadTrek, will be expanding opening another location in Cambridge, Vrbanovic says ” We’ll be meeting with the Erwin Hymer ownership in Germany early next week to number one, express our appreciation for their investment in jobs in the community and number two, to discuss future expansion plans with them.”

The 2017 business development mission to Germany builds on the 2016 mission that Mayors Craig, Jaworsky and Vrbanovic took with Toronto Mayor John Tory to Silicon Valley, and the 2016 mission to Germany taken by Mayors’ Jaworsky and Craig with the Waterloo EDC.

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