The new Brazilian office of the German VDMA will be up and running as of April this year. The office will be managed by Thomas Junqeira Ayres Ulbrich, who has both German and Brazilian roots.
As of April 2013, the VDMA will have a representative office in Sao Paulo/Brazil. Thereby the association will be represented in all of the so-called BRIC-States with its own offices.
Brazil has become very important for the German engineering sector during the past few years. More than one fourth of the German exports are machines and plants. Especially materials handling technology, power transmission engineering as well as food processing machinery and packaging machinery are in great demand. After the US, Germany is the most important machine supplier for this Latin-American country.
The new “Director executive do VDMA Brasil”, Thomas Junqeira Ayres Ulbrich, 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 some European mechanical engineering companies since the turn of the millennium.
“The desire for a second country led me back to Brazil – together with the VDMA. I am looking forward to being able to support all of the German-Brazilian mechanical engineering companies and I will be glad to be at your disposal in the centre of Sao Paulo and sometimes in Frankfurt as well,” said Thomas J.A. UIbrich.
“The VDMA is glad to have found a committed colleague who knows not only Brazil very well but also the mechanical engineering sector with its special singularity,” said Dr. Hannes Hesse, Executive Director of the VDMA.