Getra S.p.A., a global energy company outside Naples, Italy, that builds electrical transformers, is looking for distribution and warehouse facilities in the Northeast. Rhode Island officials think they have what the company needs at ports in Providence and North Kingstown and made a pitch for the business during a recent trade mission to Italy and Ireland.
“They’re very clear in trying to bring the product into the U.S. market,” said Marcel Valois, executive director of the R.I. Commerce Corporation, after accompanying Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee on the April 27 to May 1 trip to drum up foreign-trade connections to the Ocean State. “Once they get a foothold, maybe they want to fabricate here. … We want them to get a foothold in Rhode Island.”
Getra, which to date has focused on Africa, Central America, the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, according to its website, is just one of several leads the four-member Rhode Island delegation developed while visiting companies and their leadership teams in Ireland and Italy, Valois said.
The trip marked a new approach for the state in expanding foreign trade, focused on bringing specific markets, trade partnerships and possible corporate expansion to Rhode Island, rather than helping companies that are already here build business abroad. It’s an approach the state is hoping to expand on, Chafee and Valois said in interviews with Providence Business News.
“The best thing we could offer is what they’re looking for: location, location, location,” Chafee said. “That’s our selling point, and that’s why they’re interested in our state. They see a great upside and all the advantages relative to lower cost compared to Boston, New York and Philadelphia.”
Fabiani and Co. of Washington, D.C., a broker for some of the foreign businesses that Rhode Island leaders visited during the trade mission, reached out to Chafee last November to alert the state to the budding foreign interest in business partnerships, the governor said.
Instead of bringing local companies abroad, as has been done in previous state trade trips, including one to Israel last November, Chafee and Valois said, Rhode Island representatives went overseas to develop “institutional ties.” This included signing 15 memorandums of understanding that document the conversations held and support for the future development of business partnerships.
The exception was GTECH Chairman Donald R. Sweitzer, who joined the mission as an “ambassador,” Valois said – or as Sweitzer put it, “cheerleader.”
After the governor and Valois made presentations to companies, Sweitzer would field questions. Getra’s queries concerned space in Rhode Island for their “gigantic” transformers, he said. And most of the companies the delegation met with wanted to know, “How bureaucratic is [Rhode Island]?”
“My answer,” Sweitzer said, “would be: ‘Listen, when you’re dealing with any government entities, there is bureaucracy. The advantage we have in Rhode Island is, our public officials are very accessible.’ ”
From an economic-development standpoint, Valois explained, luring companies to the state typically involves trying to “steal industry from other places. But that’s not necessarily the way the game is going in the future. So, what we’re trying to do is to create strategic partnerships … to tie companies together. Instead of fighting each other, [companies can have] mutually beneficial relationships.”
For example, if Monaghan Brothers, a furniture maker in County Mayo, Ireland, and one of the companies Chafee and Valois met with, develops a market in the United States for its products, as it indicates it wants to do, then Rhode Island in turn could help warehouse its imports and support the means for having freight haulers truck its products in, Valois said.
Rhode Island’s strong support of renewable energy makes it attractive to Italy’s Ropatec S.r.l., which uses vertical blades in its wind turbines that take up less air space, Valois said. They are an example of a partnership that could develop within months, instead of years, he said.
“We met with the manufacturer that designs, engineers and assembles [the turbines],” he said. “They’ve clearly made it known, if they can get a market for the U.S., they would consider a fabrication facility in Rhode Island.”
SelectUSA, a U.S. Department of Commerce program in direct foreign investment, may be part of Rhode Island’s approach to luring foreign trade here going forward, Valois said. Geographically neutral, the program provides advocacy when a governor, mayor or county executive reaches out abroad while competing for foreign-trade investments.
Rhode Island has not yet actively participated in the program.
“We’re just trying to get in the game,” Valois explained.
Besides Getra in Italy, and Ireland’s Shannon Airport and Ireland West Airport Knock, which are interested in connecting flights with T.F. Green Airport, the delegation met with nine different companies in County Mayo, Ireland; Greencore’s world headquarters in Dublin; GTECH/Lottomatica in Rome; Kimbo, Italy’s second-largest espresso coffee maker; and other Italian firms, including Ropatec; and the Galivm Restaurant chain, in Italy, which could open its first U.S. restaurant within the next year.
The total cost of the trip was not available last week, said Melissa Czerwein, spokeswoman for the R.I. Commerce Corporation. She said the state is only covering the costs for travel and related expenses for the governor and Valois. Sweitzer’s expenses were covered by GTECH, while the R.I. Airport Corporation paid for President and CEO Kelly Fredericks to join the other three in Ireland. •
