Baltic fans feel out local companies
The hockey is great, but some visiting Latvians are slipping away from the Halifax Metro Centre to do some real business.
"Perhaps people came for the hockey, but they are seeing some terrific business possibilities," said Robert Dambergs, a long-time Halifax resident who described himself as a serious promoter of all things Baltic.
Estimates suggest between 500 and 800 Latvians are in Halifax for the IIHF men’s world hockey championship.
But groups from Latvia have dropped in on several Nova Scotia companies focusing on the environment, engineering, biotechnology and tourism.
"It turns out that Nova Scotia and Latvia have a lot of common ground," Kim Dobson of Medex Laboratories Ltd. in Windsor said after a Latvian delegation spent about three hours touring the operation, which produces portable laboratories.
After these informal talks, more formal relationships should be explored, said Mr. Dambergs.
"Officials from Latvia see huge potential in some of the technology that is being used, or is under development, in Nova Scotia," he said.
Innovascreen Inc., a biotechnology research company operating at the InNOVAcorp BioScience Enterprise Centre on the Halifax waterfront, the Highland Energy Inc. methane-gas recovery project at the landfill site in Upper Sackville, Bebbington Industries Inc., a Burnside Park operation that produces environmentally-friendly cleaning products, and several tourism and engineering firms also received visitors.
"There are many exciting business development possibilities," said Irena Cirpuse, trade commissioner with the Canadian Embassy in Riga.
Margers Krams, the Latvian ambassador to Canada, and Kirovs Lipmans, a Latvian businessman and hockey promoter, are among those scheduling meetings with business leaders and touring sites in Nova Scotia, said Mr. Dambergs.
Mr. Lipmans is principal shareholder of Grindex, the leading pharmaceutical company in the Baltic States, and is also president of the Latvian Hockey Federation.
Mr. Dambergs said significant business development announcements can be expected in the weeks following the hockey championship.
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Reprinted from The Chronicle-Herald, edition date Wednesday May 7, 2008.