Next week I am attending a trade show in the Beijing and Shanghai areas. That’s because in my investment banking career, kicking factory tyres became something I loved to do.
You can call them junkets, but I’ve been to visit coal generators in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Shanghai region, gas generators in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia, and flown by helicopter over wind farms in South Australia.
On the building materials side I’ve toured plasterboard factories in Shanghai, Seoul, Bangkok, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, quarries and cement works in Florida, NSW, South Australia, Queensland, brickworks/fibre cement plants/rooftile plants in various US and Australian States.
And you can add sugar mills and factories, insulation plants, aluminium smelters even a carpet factory.
I mention this partly to remind myself, before I forget, and partly to explain how factory visits became an itch that, since I left UBS 10 years ago, I’ve had little opportunity to scratch.
