Wolfgang Shih

Solingen, NRW Germany

Managing Director

Manufacturing

I am managing the start-up of the BEAVER INTERNATIONAL GmbH in Germany in a green field situation. The last 18 years before then, I had been working for the Columbus McKinnon Corp., one of the market leaders in hoisting and materials handling, in various functions like President, Product & Materials Manager and MD Asian Operations. The main part of my activity was to set up the two Chinese manufacturing facilities, the Hong Kong branch and the distribution operation in Thailand. The initial investment was very small (4 x 100K US$) and I had 8 employees in 1992. In the first 12 years we achieved an aggregate average annual growth of 47% with a net profit before tax between 18%-23%.