The German Construction Equipment and Building Material Machinery association (VDMA) is to open an office in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
It means the association will be represented in all of the BRIC countries with its own offices.
Brazil has become important to the German engineering sector during the past few years. More than one fourth of German exports are machines and plants.
The materials in greatest demand are materials handling technology, power transmission engineering, food processing machinery and packaging machinery. After the USA, Germany is the most important machine supplier for the Latin-American country.
The new ‘Director executive do VDMA Brasil’, is Thomas Junqeira Ayres Ulbrich, who has German and Brazilian roots. His mother’s family comes from Salvador, Bahia. Ulbrich grew up in Germany and studied in Bonn. He spent his internship in Rio de Janeiro.
He worked as a lawyer at VDMA from 1989 to 2000. He has had ‘full sympathy’ for the mechanical engineering sector since that time as he has been working for European mechanical engineering companies since the turn of the millennium.
