Morton business group visits China

Village officials, business leaders and residents returned over the weekend from what Mayor Norm Durflinger called an "extremely successful" nine-day trip to China.
"We made more business connections, including one company that will be visiting here in about a month, and 32 people returned home more educated about what China is like today," he said.

Durflinger, Village Board member Steve Newhouse and family members were part of the Morton contingent.

The mayor said no village funds were used for the trip, which cost $2,270 per person.

Jennifer Daly and Kim Uhlig from the Morton Economic Development Council also were part of the group, which stopped in Beijing, Shanghai and Tiantai, the village's sister city, for sightseeing, shopping, business recruitment meetings and a visit to a school. Durflingler, Daly and Uhlig spent an entire day in business meetings in Shanghai, including a meeting with three people from an organization that represents 8,000 businesses.

The meetings were arranged by the state of Illinois, which has a trade office in Shanghai.

"We felt we walked out of there with three good prospects for future talks," Durflinger.

Tiantai is the home of Zhejiang Yinlun Machinery Co., China's leading manufacturer of heat-exchanger products, which opened its North American headquarters last fall in a 50,000-square-foot building on Commerce Drive in Morton.

The sister city arrangement between Morton and Tiantai became official last fall.

"We toured Tiantai's administration building and one of its factories, and reinforced our friendship," Durflinger said.

This was the mayor's second trip to China in about a year. He went on a business recruitment trip last fall with other Illinois government and business leaders organized by Gov. Pat Quinn.

Durflinger got to do something on this visit he didn't do last time. "We rode a bullet train," he said. "It was on the return trip to Shanghai after a business meeting. It took us about two hours to drive there going about 80 miles per hour all the way, and about 40 minutes to get back on the train."

The Morton travelers left Oct. 4 from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and returned to O'Hare late Friday night. They arrived in Morton via a charter bus at about 3 a.m. Saturday.

Steve Stein can be reached at 686-3114 or stevestein21@yahoo.com. Read his Stein Time blog at pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpartanSteve.

Source: http://www.pjstar.com/business/x470404919/Morton-business-group-visits-China

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