FOCUS DENMARK 04/2008

Colophon

Title:
FOCUS DENMARK 04/2008

Publisher:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Responsible institution:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Author:
Under-Secretary for Foreign Trade & Investment Ambassador Jarl Frijs-Madsen (Editor in chief), Poul Kjar (Executive editor), Annemarie Zinck (Editor)

Other contributors:
Nigel Mander (English editor), Schultz Grafisk (Electronic edition), SaloGruppen (Print), Kontrapunkt (Design), KP2, Allan Tonning (Layout), Anders Tvevad, Scanpix Denmark (Cover photo), Pernille Rude (Distribution)

Language:
English

URL:
http://www.netpublikationer.dk/um/9229/index.htm

ISSN:
1601-9776

Version:
1.0

Version/edition:
13-01-2009

Publication standard nr.:
2.0

Data formats:
html,htm,jpg,gif,pdf,css,js

Publisher category:
statslig

Copyright:
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark

Notes and other information:
Material contained in FOCUS Denmark does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Danish Trade Council or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.

Reproduction is authorised, provided the source is acknowledged, except where otherwise stated. Citations may be made without prior permission, provided the source is acknowledged.

Focus Denmark is printed on Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper from Arctic Paper, Denmark. The wood that is used for making the paper comes from sustainable forestry, which meets all environmental, social and economic standards. The forest is independently inspected and assessed according to the principles and criteria approved by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Table Of Contents

EDITORIAL

IN BRIEF

• PM SETS OUT AMBITIOUS GREEN VISION FOR DENMARK
• DENMARK IN THE NEWS
• High profile speakers to address Copenhagen Climate Congress
• AN AIR-CONDITIONING SYSTEM THAT USES 90% LESS ELECTRICITY
• DANES WHO MADE A DIFFERENCE
• WORTH KNOWING ABOUT
• Danish biotech industry in Europe’s top 3
• When fuelling a ship, it pays to know exactly what you’re buying
• BOOKMARK DENMARK
• A magnet for capital fund investments

• Denmark’s evergreen island
• The farmer who’s laughing all the way to the bank
• TIME Magazine acclaims environmental hero from Samsø
• The car that likes a headwind
• Riding a wave of potential

• I NEVER FEEL FAR FROM HOME IN DENMARK
• I HAVE BECOME A MORE INTERESTING PERSON

• Tanzania welcomes the Danish Queen
• Tanzania: Danish development assistance with special significance
• Danish refrigeration success helps Tanzania
• T-shirts create development

• WORLD CLASS AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
• ROBOT FARM
• DANISH COOKING IN STAR QUALITY

EDITORIAL

THE BUSINESS OF SAVING THE PLANET

In less than a year – in December 2009 – world leaders will gather in Copenhagen at the UN Climate Change Conference. The aim is to decide on the post-Kyoto regime – obligations to for instance reduce CO₂ emissions after 2012. As with all multilateral negotiations it will be a challenge to reach a compromise. But the negotiators will have a clear mandate from the peoples of the earth: save the planet while there’s still time. From Denmark to South Africa and from India to the US there is a growing consciousness of the relations between quality of life, clean environment and healthy climate.

But in a time of financial and economic crisis – what about the cost? Can the world afford to set ambitious plans to reduce the level of CO₂ at a time when economic growth is low or even negative? The answer is yes. Or rather: we can not afford not doing anything. Why? Because – leaving aside all the relevant ethical and moral questions – there is a clear business case for saving the planet. The costs of the negative consequences of global warming are exorbitant, running to possibly trillions of USD. These are estimates on scenario-based analysis. But we also have historical facts to base the business case on. The case comprises cost savings from reduced energy consumption as well as increased earnings and new jobs as a result of from cleantech solutions. How do we know? Because Denmark has already proven that it is possible. In 25 years we have had near-zero growth in energy consumption while at the same time achieving 75% economic growth and cementing a position as one of the world’s most competitive nations. Companies and households have saved billions of kroner on energy, while on the earnings side considerable progress is also being made. Danish exports of energy technology are growing faster than any other goods, and passed the DKK 50 billion (almost USD 10 billion) mark in 2007. This has been made possible through research, innovation and production of new energy-saving technologies. At the same time, utilisation of renewable energy in Denmark has increased to 15% of total energy consumption. Indeed in some parts of Denmark, like the island of Samsø, it accounts for 100%. That is an interesting case to explore, which you can do just by turning to page 16 of this issue of Focus Denmark.

Enjoy the read.

EDITOR IN CHIEF
Under-Secretary for Foreign Trade & Investment Ambassador Jarl Frijs-Madsen

IN BRIEF

PM SETS OUT AMBITIOUS GREEN VISION FOR DENMARK

Danish Prime Minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Photo: Scanpix

At a recently held conference of the Liberal Party, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen spelled out an ambitious vision for Denmark as a land of green technological innovation, that is free from dependency on fossil fuels. This vision differs little in principle from the far-sighted government plans set in train in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis, but the practical aspects are both contemporary and comprehensive.

First there is a green growth plan, creating jobs and lucrative exports by exploiting the key areas where Denmark has a technological lead – renewable energy and energy efficiency – supported by a strong focus on sustainable building and promoting Denmark as a test-bed for electric cars powered by wind energy.

Then there is a green political programme of massive funding for energy and infrastructure research and demonstration projects, complemented by the introduction of new energy and environmental standards, as well as tax reform aimed at creating a conducive economic environment.

Rounding off the vision is a green foreign policy aimed at putting Denmark in the vanguard of EU initiatives on energy and climate, as well as in the global limelight when the country hosts the all-important UN Climate Change Conference COP 15 in December 2009, where a successor to the Kyoto Protocol is set to be hammered out in a blaze of global publicity.

High profile speakers to address Copenhagen Climate Congress

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. Photo: Scanpix.

José Manuel Barroso. Photo: Scanpix.

Lord Nicholas Stern. Photo: Scanpix.

Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the influential Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, IPCC chairman Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, and chairman of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso will deliver keynote speeches at an international scientific congress on climate change in Copenhagen on 10-12 March 2009.

The University of Copenhagen is hosting the congress, entitled “Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions” in association with the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU). Several thousand scientific researchers will participate in 57 sessions during the three day event.

Strategically scheduled in advance of the all-important United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009, the congress aims to provide a synthesis of existing and emerging scientific knowledge necessary for making intelligent decisions to help mitigate and adapt to climate change. An executive summary from the congress will be handed to policy makers at COP15.

More information on the congress is available on: http://climatecongress.ku.dk/

AN AIR-CONDITIONING SYSTEM THAT USES 90% LESS ELECTRICITY

Danish company AC Sun has invented a climate-friendly air-conditioning system based on solar energy that uses only 10% of the electricity consumption of conventional air-conditioning systems, writes financial daily newspaper Børsen.

The novelty of the system, which is based on well-known thermal processes, is its considerable power savings (a factor of 10), pollution-free operation and silent cooling. The power savings come from the fact that the compressor in the system is run by a solar-driven steam engine, whereas conventional air-conditioning systems use an electric motor.

AC Sun chairman Bo Rhein Knudsen told Børsen: “There are enormous opportunities and now we have to find the right distributors. We have to mature the product and there is decent interest from both Danish and foreign companies.” Knudsen expect AC Sun will have its product ready for launch in about 12 months.

AC Sun: http://www.ac-sun.com

WORTH KNOWING ABOUT

A profile of a Danish organisation that might interest you, either as a point of contact for business activity, or to add to your knowledge of what goes on in Denmark.

Career Guide 2 Denmark: Lots to interest job seekers from overseas – and it’s all in English

WHO ARE THEY?
Career Guide 2 Denmark is an organisation which helps Danish companies attract skilled knowledge workers from abroad by providing information in English about job opportunities in a range of career areas.

HOW CAN THEY BE USEFUL TO YOU?
On its website, Career Guide 2 Denmark gives foreign job seekers comprehensive and up-to-date information on Denmark, its lifestyle and culture, its labour market and the job opportunities available in 50 leading Danish companies and organisations, as well as numerous useful links.

The Career Search menu on the website is conveniently divided into 8 different career areas: Engineering; IT; Medical & Health; Natural Science; Technology and Technics; Economics; Logistics; Administration; Business, Finance & Marketing.

A click of the mouse on any of these submenus delivers not only the range of jobs available but also clear and concise information about the companies – all in English.

WANT TO CONTACT THEM?

Internet: http://www.cg2denmark.com
E-mail: info@cg2denmark.com
Tel: +45 30240080

Address:
Career Guide 2 Denmark
Studiestræde 14A 4th floor
1455 Copenhagen K
Denmark

BOOKMARK DENMARK

If there’s an event in your interest area, why not bookmark it to attend? Denmark is a great place to visit!

2009

A magnet for capital fund investments

A new global survey from Pricewaterhouse-Coopers shows that over the last 10 years, Denmark has achieved a 56% growth rate in capital fund investments, the highest in the western world. Financial daily newspaper Børsen reports that PwC ascribes Denmark’s strong performance to the fact that it has relatively many well-run medium-sized companies, the traditional targets of capital funds.

PwC’s analysis also shows that Denmark is among Europe’s top six for capital fund investments measured as a percentage of GDP. The figure for Denmark is 0.5%, a tad above the European average.

Developments have taken place rapidly in Denmark in the last decade. In 1998 there were very few Danish capital funds, and the major Nordic and British funds had no local presence. Today the picture is very different, and the big overseas capital funds now have offices in Copenhagen.

Innovative and democratic fashion

BY INGE KJÆRGAARD

February is cold and dark in Denmark – but there is also light and life. Fashion week lights up in Copenhagen at the beginning of February.

Photos: Scanpix

Flashlights, high heels, colours, news, long-legged girls and charismatic men. Copenhagen Fashion Week is approaching. From 5-8 February 2009, buyers from around the world visit Copenhagen and take a look at the colours, shapes and styles of the autumn/winter 2009/2010 collections.

Copenhagen’s next fashion week will fill four venues with fashion shows, established designers and up-and-coming brands.

“Copenhagen Fashion Week is developing into a very international event with a special focus on showing the best from Scandinavia. Copenhagen is a creative hub. Buyers can discover the next big thing and find new brands that can become big names,” says Eva Kruse, director of Danish Fashion Institute.

And according to Peter Sabroe, who is the exhibition manager for Copenhagen International Fashion Fair, CIFF, the world needs Scandinavian design.

“Buyers come to see strong Scandinavian brands because they are good, fashionable clothes that can be sold at sensible prices.”

FASHION FROM THE NORTH

But what is it that Danish and other Scandinavian designers can do? At Gallery, one of the fashion fairs during Copenhagen Fashion Week, they think that Scandinavian fashion has become popular because it manages to combine innovative design and saleability. The finished product is unique, with a quality and price that makes it very saleable.

Gallery will present the strongest ever line-up of Scandinavian designer fashion at the fair in 2009.

Another of the organisers of Copenhagen Fashion Week is CPH Vision. In 2009, it has two exhibition venues – so there will be even more displays of Scandinavian fashion to look at. CPH Vision is also full of optimism about the fair. Buyers expect a lot from Scandinavia – and the message is that their expectations will be fulfilled. Scandinavian fashion fits together well. The Scandinavian countries have a shared cultural background that rubs off on the design. In addition, Scandinavian fashion easily blends together with other international brands.

CPH Vision also acts as a catalyst for young designers and profiles them to foreign countries.

Danish design is known for its price level – which is not too high. But that does not mean quality is compromised.

“The shared feature is that you get a lot of brand for your money. It is democratic fashion, fashion for any purse or wallet. And it is fashion that is easy to wear. They must be clothes that can be used. Danish design has a functionalistic approach to clothes,” says Eva Kruse.

AN EVOLVING FASHION NATION

Danish fashion has seen rapid development in the last 10-15 years. But the growth stems from further back in time – at the end of the 1970s out in western Denmark.

“A lot of clothing was manufactured there, but they saw that production costs were becoming too high. So Denmark started outsourcing at an early stage. The machinists had further training so their knowledge stayed in the industry. That has become a huge success, and we now have a quite unique position. Clothing is our fourth biggest export sector, and Danish fashion has a strong position abroad,” explains Peter Sabroe.

And according to Eva Kruse, Danish companies are good at controlling the quality in production.

“Because Denmark started outsourcing early on, Danish companies are good at managing quality in relation to price. And that is an advantage right now. Despite the financial crisis, it will still be a big fashion week. Scandinavian fashion has an audience, regardless of whether economies go up or down,” says Eva Kruse.

“There is quite a big spread in Danish and Scandinavian fashion, and therein lies its strength. Our fashion week can achieve things that other fashion weeks can’t, because we combine the fair with shows. In London and Paris for example, it is mostly built around shows. Ours is both a fashion and marketing week.”

HIGH STANDARD DESPITE FINANCIAL CRISIS

Fashion has become an important export product for Denmark. In 2007 the export share for Danish fashion increased by 12.1% compared to the previous year, with 90% of production exported. The industry’s total revenues rose to DKK 35 billion in 2007 – a 10 per cent increase on the previous year. Danish fashion can compete on the global catwalk.

Lots of new brands are sprouting up, and the industry has gradually become professionalised. In fact it has found its feet so well that ’Danish fashion’, far from being the passing craze that many feared at the time, has become industrialised and acknowledged throughout the world.

Denmark is known for well-established brands such as IC Companys and Bestseller – but small brands such as Malene Birger and DAY Birger et Mikkelsen have also managed very well.

The financial crisis is a large point of focus at the moment, in the fashion world as elsewhere. But Copenhagen Fashion Week will not be marked by crisis times.

“The financial crisis will probably have an impact on the fashion world. New brands require venture capital and if that does not appear, we will probably feel it on innovation. But we will not see that in February. That is the same high standard as we have seen in the previous years,” says Peter Sabroe.

Crown Princess Mary, who is known for her extensive knowledge of fashion, is patron of Copenhagen Fashion Week and an ambassador for Danish fashion abroad. Photo: Scanpix

WIND AND WAVES

Denmark’s evergreen island

BY JESPER LØVENBALK HANSEN

Ten years ago, Samsø accepted a major challenge: CO₂ emissions had to be reduced to zero and all the island’s electricity should come from renewable energy. It took eight years to reach the objective, and today Samsø is exporting green energy to the rest of Denmark. Photo: Energiakademiet.dk

Wind turbines, straw and rapeseed oil – in less than ten years the residents of the small Danish island of Samsø have managed to reduce CO₂ emissions by 140 per cent. Today renewable energy is the traditional farming community’s largest export

Briefly stated, Samsø is a 114 square kilometre windswept island with a population of around 4,000 people. For centuries the island’s inhabitants and their ancestors have benefited from the sea’s moist breezes and the nutrient-rich soil, which together provide some of the best cultivation conditions in Denmark. This is where the year’s first potato harvest and the best strawberries come from. During the summer, people from all over Denmark flock to Samsø to enjoy the island’s landscapes, fishing hamlets and long beaches. And this is how Danes have known Samsø for generations. But ten years ago, a new chapter began, and today Samsø has a very different story to tell.

In 1997, the Danish Ministry of Environment and Energy arranged a competition for the most realistic and viable plan for a complete reorganisation of a local area’s energy supply to 100 per cent renewable energy. The reason was that in 1992 the Danish government had already set the target that 35 per cent of the country’s energy should come from renewable energy by 2030, and now the Ministry of Environ ment and Energy wanted to speed up a number of local initiatives to prove that the idea of renewable energy was not just hot air.

PlanEnergi, a small local consultancy firm, prepared a proposal for Samsø – which won the competition. Based on the island’s resources of wind, sun, straw and wood chips, the aim was to make Samsø self-sufficient with renewable energy and reduce CO₂ emissions to zero over a period of just ten years.

“Suddenly Samsø’s local politicians had won a very ambitious competition to become Denmark’s environmental island. I think it frightened them a bit because how would they now go about that task? But fortunately they took on the challenge,” says Jesper Kjems of Samsø Energy Academy.

POPULAR SUPPORT

But it was far from just Samsø’s local politicians who were unprepared for the task. The islands’ inhabitants, who value their quiet existence and possess a healthy scepticism for anything new from outside, seemed an almost insurmountable challenge.

“Many myths had to be dispelled at the beginning. Myths that it would cost us in lost tourism, that wind turbines would plaster the ground with dead birds and that kind of thing,” says Jesper Kjems.

Initially, 11 wind turbines were to be installed on land. They would collectively cover the island’s electricity needs. At the same time, four thermal plants powered by straw, wood chips and solar panels were planned. The investments had to be raised locally, so it was imperative that Samsø’s inhabitants supported the plans.

“Fortunately farmers are good at sums,” Jesper Kjems explains, “and we received 50 applications from private farmers who all wanted permission to install one of the 11 wind turbines.”

It’s one thing to have enterprising farmers, who are used to weighing up risks. They can see a good business opportunity when it presents itself. But the remaining inhabitants of school teachers, bakers and general wage-earners are another thing altogether. Their ability and desire to invest are more modest and to persuade them to join a common environmental project requires patience, a good strategy and a person who knows everything and everybody in the local community.

To take on that task, Samsø Municipality employed Søren Hermansen. As Samsø’s first energy guide he had to convince the islanders that the project would be to their own advantage, but that their participation was a requirement.

“The difficulty has been to turn the process from being a top-down managed project, where some politicians and experts have an idea, to a local project where the individual citizens of Samsø could see the opportunities,” says Søren Hermansen.

His first task was to identify a number of local entrepreneurs with the capacity and desire to invest. And then he had to find the key individuals to get the entire project moving.

“The straw, which the farmers previously just burnt on their land, has now become a thriving business. They sell their straw to heating plants and get the ashes back, which they spread on their land as fertiliser. In addition, waste wood is being used as fuel and solar thermal panels are used to heat water,” says Jesper Kjems of Samsø Energy Academy. Photo: Energiakademiet.dk

Since the offshore wind turbine park was completed in February 2003, Samsø municipality has earned around DKK 1 million annually from sales of electricity. The profit has been spent on building and operating the Energy Academy, which is Samsø’s laboratory for new environmental projects, teaching and information. Read more: http://www.energiakademiet.dk. Photo: Energiakademiet.dk

THE BLACKSMITH

Such a man is the blacksmith, Ole Hemmingsen. As director of the blacksmiths Brd. Stjerne, he has been responsible for many of the oil-burning furnaces that have been installed on Samsø, and which regularly need to be replaced. So he and the rest of the island’s blacksmiths were chosen to inform people about the opportunity to invest in sustainable heating.

All the island’s blacksmiths were taught how to install solar panels and environmentally friendly wood-burning stoves, and with their solar certificates in their hands, they could sell green technology at competitive prices as an alternative to oil-burning furnaces. And then green technology suddenly became popular on Samsø.

“It has become prestigious to have solar panels, and people no longer ask so much about the economics of it. It has simply become smarter to have five solar panels on the roof than a Mercedes Benz in the garage,” says Ole Hemmingsen.

Today there are 300 private heating plants powered by solar panels and energy-saving wood-burning stoves. Together with the island’s four heating plants, they ensure that 70 per cent of all heating on Samsø is CO₂ neutral.

SLEEPLESS ON SAMSØ

As soon as you arrive on Samsø, you can see that something has happened to the island – that the islanders have been persuaded. Ten offshore wind turbines tower more than 300 feet into the sky. These turbines produce 80,000 MWh annually, sufficient to cover the electricity needs of 5,000 households.

Of the ten offshore wind turbines, three are owned by private investors and two were offered on a cooperative ownership basis, in which a total of 430 islanders have each bought a share. The five other offshore wind turbines are owned by the municipality, which initially gave Samsø’s mayor sleepless nights. He headed the Samsø municipality that invested DKK 125 million of the islanders’ money in wind turbines.

“In one night we indebted Samsø to the tune of almost 40,000 kroner per inhabitant. It was a move that gave me sleepless nights for weeks,” says Samsø’s Mayor, Carsten Bruun.

The same model applies to the wind turbines on land. Nine of the 11 are owned by private farmers. The other two are cooperatively owned with 450 individuals each holding shares.

A quarter of the residents on Samsø thus have a share in wind turbines. Virtually every family has invested in green heating of their homes. Farmers are experimenting with biodiesel made from rapeseed oil, and the municipality’s annual surplus of approx. DKK 1 million from sales of electricity from their five offshore wind turbines has been reinvested in Samsø Energy Academy, which again supports the development of new projects. And all the way through, the Samsø model has been used: local investments and local ownership.

“You might call it romanticism, but I think people like making some things together. It is not enough just to pay your taxes and let the public sector supply communal goods. At the same time, it gives us a really good feeling to be masters over what transpires here. It instils local pride and that is what we are building the projects on,” says Søren Hermansen.

Jesper Kjems agrees. He opines that is has been crucial that Samsø’s population realised early on that they would recover some of the life and vitality that many outlying areas of Denmark are slowly losing.

“Local embeddedness has been a vital factor. The project has branched out across the whole island, and everybody depends on it. And then it is unimportant whether people participate for the sake of money or for ideological reasons. As long as the end objective is the same. So our message is that people do not necessarily need to do this for the sake of polar bears. They can just do it for their own sakes.”

The farmer who’s laughing all the way to the bank

BY JESPER LØVENBALK HANSEN

Jørgen Tranberg was one of the first on Samsø to seriously engage in making the island CO₂-neutral. He has invested DKK 19 million in green energy and today is the owner of a land-based 1 MW wind turbine as well as the co-owner of one of Samsø’s ten 2.3 MW offshore wind turbines. Photo: Energiakademiet.dk

Farmer, money man and environmentalist. Jørgen Tranberg is all of these things. He has his farm, his land and his cows. And a 150 foot high wind turbine that spins gold

A journalist from The New Yorker has described Jørgen Tranberg as “a beefy man with a mop of brown hair and an unpredictable sense of humor.”

He thinks that is funny, just as he altogether finds most things funny.

“Well, it’s true enough. But when I first came to this island, I was also a precocious young man with new ideas.”

With his blue overalls, rumpled hair and creased T-shirt, Jørgen Tranberg unmistakeably resembles the farmer he is, and was in 1983 when he moved from west Jutland to Samsø as a young man to cultivate the good, cheap soil.

At that time, wind turbines and sustainable energy were still something mostly associated with ageing hippies and tree huggers. The residents of Samsø had no idea that wind turbines at some point would become the very symbol of the island.

“When I arrived, I quickly noticed that it always blows like crazy here. So I joined an investment company in Kolby Kås ferry town, where we installed the island’s first wind turbine. That was when things actually started.”

IDEALISM WITH COMMON SENSE

The first wind turbine has long since delivered its return on investment, and now simply stands as a symbol of a bygone age, where attitudes to wind turbines went from prejudice and scepticism to a good business proposition.

Jørgen Tranberg has also advanced a lot further in the 25 years he has spent on Samsø. After the first investment, he was one of the first and most pertinacious advocates of making Samsø a green energy island. And although people on the island would not describe Jørgen Tranberg as a dyed-in-the-wool idealist – he explains that it is also serious.

“You don’t invest 19 million kroner purely for its own sake. I put everything on the line – my farm, my land, even my dog – everything. It would be too easy to say that it was for the sake of the environment alone.”

Jørgen Tranberg does however reveal that his total investments are repaying him well. He owns one of Samsø’s 11 wind turbines on land, and half of one of the ten giant offshore wind turbines. And as with any other good farmer, the idea of independence is always a crucial argument.

“We simply cannot risk dependency on oil from the Middle East or other places. So my view is that we had better get some wind turbines installed.”

That is Jørgen Tranberg’s philosophy. And his strategy is equally simple:

“You take an estate owner, a mayor and a bunch of farmers. Together we know what common sense is. We’re no dummies.”

TIME Magazine acclaims environmental hero from Samsø

BY JESPER LØVENBALK HANSEN

Søren Hermansen has become a celebrity on TIME Magazine’s current list of the ten greatest environmental heroes in the world. The same list includes California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Chinese journalist and environmental activist Wang Yongchen, and the green venture capitalist John Doerr. Photo: Energiakademiet.dk

Former school teacher Søren Hermansen has fought to make Samsø Denmark’s sustainable island for the last ten years. Now he is ranked on TIME Magazine’s list of the world’s ten greatest environmental heroes

Like a missionary he has knocked on doors across the island. He has held countless presentations in local village halls. He has drawn, he has talked, and he has convinced the Samsø islanders that it is their island which should be Denmark’s finest renewable energy showcase. And although he has been far from alone in carrying out the work, it is Søren Hermansen to whom a significant part of the credit is ascribed for Samsø today being 100% self-sufficient with CO₂-free, sustainable energy.

So who is Søren Hermansen. An idealist? Yes, absolutely. Before Søren Hermansen took on the position as Samsø’s leading environmentalist, he was an environmental instructor at one of the island’s schools where he taught the pupils sustainable ways of living.

But Søren Hermansen is also a realist, who understood back in 1997 that it was neither idealism nor doomsday speeches about environmental catastrophes, global warming and rising sea levels which would convince Samsø’s 4,000 inhabitants to invest their time and resources in what has become one of the most efficiently conducted green revolutions.

“We held a lot of meetings in village halls and inns, and that took a couple of years. Many people were initially sitting on their hands, doubting whether it would be possible. But there were some who could see the development opportunities and the benefits to themselves in the idea. It was not about idealism and environmentalism, but about creating new products and business opportunities as well as bread on the table,” Søren Hermansen has told Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information.

Today, ten years after Søren Hermansen started his mission, the results can be read in Samsø’s energy and CO₂ accounts. Previously, Samsø depended on oil and diesel that were shipped to the island, and on electricity produced by coal-fired power stations which was supplied via an under-sea cable from the mainland. Today, the power flows in the opposite direction; electricity produced from renewable energy has become the island’s largest export. It means that whereas in 1997 Samsø’s annual CO₂ emissions were 45,000 tons, the figure today is –15,000 tons: a negative number because the islanders now produce so much renewable energy that they can export clean environment.

GREEN ORACLE

Now that the big wide world has become aware of Samsø, Søren Hermansen has become a man to whom everyone looks for answers. As TIME Magazine writes in its reason for adding his name to the Heroes of the Environment 2008 list of the world’s currently most important environmental heroes: “Hermansen has become a green oracle, travelling from country to country telling the story of Samso’s success when he’s not at home running the Energy Academy, a research center for clean power.”

When anyone asks, they are given the answer that the story of Samsø goes from the bottom upwards. “The crucial point is that we have shown that if you want to change how you generate energy, you have to start at the community level,” says Søren Hermansen.

The car that likes a headwind

BY INGE KJÆRGAARD

DTU’s wind turbine car with Robert Mikkelsen at the wheel during the Aeolus Matchrace in the Netherlands.

Its name is winDTUrbine racer – the wind turbine car that a team of students and researchers from the Technical University of Denmark have developed

Most of the time it’s preferable to have a tailwind – especially if you need the wind to move forwards. But at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) a competition car has been developed which gets its means of forward movement from a headwind.

In January 2008 a team at DTU started planning the wind-driven car, and senior researcher Robert Mikkelsen became the project manager.

“We made some initial analyses to find out whether it was at all possible to drive directly against the wind. It was, and we actually discovered that in principle you can drive infinitely fast, but there are natural factors like friction which prevent you from achieving it,” he explains.

Over the summer, the car was built with the aim of competing in the Aeolus Matchrace in the Netherlands. The car is two metres wide, three and a half metres long, and the wind turbine which powers the car is located about two metres up in the air behind the driver. The wind turbine channels the energy of the wind to the rear wheel drive – the wheels turn and the car moves forward against the wind.

The highest speeds recorded so far are 23-25 kilometres per hour, depending on the strength of the headwind.

“There are still some unknown factors, and there are several things that need to be improved – we need to minimise transmission losses, improve the aerodynamics and develop a new rotor especially optimised for the wind turbine car. Our first objective was a functional car – in the next project we will make detailed measurements and get a better picture of the connection between theory and actual performance,” explains Robert Mikkelsen.

But what can it actually be used for – will the ordinary motorist drive around with a turbine on the roof?

“It’s difficult to say how the future will look. The project demonstrates that wind energy can be used for transportation in a direct headwind. And in the future, wind energy will contribute significantly more to transport than is the case today. That is what this project is contributing to,” says Robert Mikkelsen, who conducts research into wind turbines and can transfer his knowledge to the wind turbine car project, and vice versa.

“From a larger perspective, it expands our knowledge of rotor aerodynamics. In the long term, the question is whether the wind turbine car will find application in a way where it gains a broad influence in relation to transport and wind energy, or whether it will be at a level where it is generally considered a gimmick. It is difficult to foresee,” he says.

In addition to the car being used for research, the project has considerable value for teaching.

“For the students, it is a really good project – we have developed some mechanical equations that are very useful from the teaching perspective,” he says.

“We have calculated that you should be able to drive at 100-140% of the wind speed, so quite a lot is still missing, and we are working on eliminating the reasons why the car loses speed. We have discovered that textbook theories and data were insufficient. We need to measure several things to become more knowledgeable about the mechanics, so that we can increase the speed of the car,” says Robert Mikkelsen.

Riding a wave of potential

BY NADIA LOUISE KRISTENSEN

The Wave Dragon prototype in a real sea test. © Wave Dragon.

The potential is enormous and far from exploited. 70 per cent of the earth’s surface is covered by water – water that moves. And in that movement lies an inexhaustible energy resource.

The UK’s Carbon Trust estimates that the potential for wave energy is between 2,000 and 4,000 TWh per year. In comparison, the world’s total electricity production in 2003 was just under 15,000 TWh. In other words up to a third of the world’s electricity can be generated from wave energy, which could see it overtake wind energy.

“The energy density in water is 800 to 1,000 times greater than in air. That is why you can obtain more energy per unit area of sea by using wave energy rather than exploiting the water surface to build offshore wind turbines. And if you combine water and wind energy there is a lot of energy to get,” says Peter Frigaard, who is a senior lecturer specialising in wave energy at Aalborg University in Denmark.

For nearly a century, environmental enthusiasts and technical wizards have toyed with the idea of extracting energy from waves. The oil crises in the 1970s gave a tailwind to environmental enthusiasts – governments and corporations in the western world became aware that it could be a good idea to disengage from the alarming uncertainty of oil prices. Investments were made in development of wind turbines and wave energy plants.

“There was rapid development at the time, but after some years the energy crisis ended, and alternative energies were no longer quite so interesting,” says Kim Nielsen of the Danish engineering and consultancy company Rambøll. He has been involved in wave energy for 30 years.

CUTTING CORNERS

Wind turbines continued to ride the wave of success that the energy crises propelled, while interest in wave energy plants was again consigned to the backwaters.

“There is only one wind – that is why it is easier and cheaper to test wind turbines. And in principle you can install a wind turbine in your back garden. Wave energy machines need to be adjusted to the size of the waves – so you cannot put a small machine out in a large ocean. And even if you find a place with small waves, small wave energy machines are still expensive to test,” says Hans Christian Sørensen, who is chairman of the European industry association for wave energy, and also chairs the board of Danish wave energy concept firm Wave Dragon.

In the 1980s and 1990s, sea tests were made with wave energy machines – but they couldn’t withstand the temper of the waves.

“There were some who tried to cut corners with wave energy machines which had not been tested on a smaller scale first. It didn’t work,” says Hans Christian Sørensen.

And it remains a challenge today. The cruel sea and the instincts of investors will decide wave energy’s future.

WIND TURBINES PAVE THE WAY

But the future looks brighter for wave energy. The western world is again threatened with expensive oil, which under all circumstances has an expiry date. Because oil is a scarce resource – in contrast to wind and waves, which can never run out. That is why interest in renewable energy has appeared on the political world agenda, and why wave energy has crawled up the interest ladder. And climate change has also made the interest in renewable energy even more widespread.

The first completed plants have been inaugurated in Portugal, and several more are on their way. There are more than 200 wave power concepts and more than 1,000 patents taken out worldwide, reflecting big differences in the principles on which they are based. Some are submerged while others sit on the surface. Some are so far away from land that they cause no disturbance to expensively bought sea views, while others lie close to the shore.

In Denmark, several wave energy machines are under development. A Danish pilot plant from Wave Dragon was the first offshore plant in the world to supply power to the grid in 2003.

The full-scale version of Wave Dragon is also set to be the world’s biggest, producing twice as much power as the largest wind turbine. One plant can produce enough power for 7,000 households, and next year British and Portuguese homes are set to benefit from clean wave energy.

“If everything goes well, after installing the first plant in Wales by the end of 2009, we can install 10 plants in Portugal and 10 plants in England from 2010/2011. Because in those countries we can get threefold better price for the electricity than in for example Denmark,” says Hans Christian Sørensen.

The price of one plant is approx. DKK 75 million. With 10 plants, Wave Dragon can cover the electricity demand of 50,000-70,000 households.

In many ways, the wind turbine industry has paved the way for wave energy in Denmark.

In addition to being renewable energy, wave energy and wind energy employ similar technologies, so Danish wave energy companies have a well-developed network of sub-suppliers available.

“We have a long tradition from biomass and wind turbines. A lot of the technology we use in our control systems has been developed for the wind turbine industry. We have the entire network of companies to draw on,” says Hans Christian Sørensen.

The Wave Star machine does not form a barrier against the waves, but cuts in at right angles to the direction of the wave. In this way the waves run through the length of the machine, and their energy is exploited in a continuous process. Photo: Wave Star

A model of a new Wave Star test station off the Danish west coast. The station will be ready for visits during COP15 – the 2009 UN Climate Conference which takes place in Denmark. Photo: Wave Star

CLOSE TO THE HEARTS OF DANES

Renewable energy has been close to the hearts of Danes for decades – and that has powered many wave energy projects.

“You could say that it lies in the soul of the people to explore renewable energy. There is a lot of interest and attention. But the important thing is to raise it from the hobby level. And wave energy requires a lot of money. You cannot just be a capable inventor who starts something up in a garage. It needs more than that,” explains Per Steenstrup, one of the owners of Wave Star Energy. Many Danish companies have realistic ideas about how to build plants that last. The next big challenge will be to make wave energy machines cheap enough to be worth one’s while.

“It is a myth that you cannot make something that lasts. Of course you can. It is no different to making an oil rig. There have just not been sufficient resources put into making these designs. The problem is really to produce the energy at a price that is competitive,” says Peter Frigaard.

But Danish manufacturers are optimistic. They have learned from dealing carelessly with the power of the sea back in the 1980s. The plants are tested again and again – initially in more quiet waters and on a smaller scale. It is a laborious work to adjust the machinery to the waves. Many of the parts need to move – but must not buckle in a storm.

“As an engineer you can calculate all sorts of things – but in real life, all sorts of other things can happen besides those you have worked out. So you have to make tests,” explains Per Steenstrup .

When first the plants are mass-produced, the manufacturers will be certain that wave energy can compete with wind energy.

“To be competitive with wind turbines, the Wave Star plant must reduce its price per kilowatt hour by four to six times. In comparison, the wind turbine industry had to reduce its prices sevenfold to reach the price level of wind turbine energy today,” says Per Steenstrup.

Warp speed in cyberspace

BY NADIA LOUISE KRISTENSEN

The next giant leap in the development of networks is currently being prepared in Denmark

The information highway is set to be expanded from something that looks like 2 tracks, to 20. Services such as Facebook, YouTube, games, IP telephony and IPTV are seriously challenging the bandwidth, so the internet needs extra capacity.

“Although we have been through an IT bubble that burst, and times of downturn, the internet is still growing. In Western countries, traffic is increasing by 50 per cent annually, while in newly developed countries the figure is 80 per cent annually. New services are constantly appearing, which put pressure on network bandwidth. YouTube alone is now generating more traffic than the entire internet in 1997. We have a pressing need for bandwidth that is 10 times faster than what we have today,” says Daniel Joseph Barry, marketing director of the Danish company TPACK.

Together with the Danish development division of Enigma Semiconductors, TPACK is leading the development of some of the essential components for handling large amounts of data traffic.

“Our role is to make the circuits which enable traffic to be channelled around at 100 Mbps. We want to ensure that data is moved to the right place,” says Daniel Joseph Barry.

Enigma Semiconductors makes the switch that divides up the traffic.

The two companies have jointly won an order with a Japanese system supplier, which will introduce 10 Gbps systems on both the Japanese and North American market. They hope to win similar orders for 100 Gbps systems in the future.

In collaboration with a Danish university, TPACK and Enigma Semiconductors have applied to the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation for funding to develop a demonstrator which can show that a 100 gigabit network is possible.

“If we get the money, we can be ready with the 100 gigabit network in three years, and that is not a moment too soon,” says Daniel Joseph Barry.

Although they reuse part of the technology from slower networks, there is much that needs to be adjusted and rethought.

And the price cannot be much higher than prices on the fastest networks today.

“We reuse as much as we can, but we need to develop a solution that is 10 times faster. Everything needs to function 10 times faster, so we push the technology to the limit,” says Daniel Joseph Barry.

If the two companies receive support from the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation, they expect to gain a leading role in the coming technology and to generate revenues of between DKK 100 million and DKK 1 billion within five years.

llustration by Lars Chrois

Innovative minds

BY NADIA LOUISE KRISTENSEN

Denmark may not have a large headcount, but it has plenty of minds that can think out of the box and create new ideas

Despite high wages, significant IT projects are being placed in Denmark. High wage demands are counterbalanced by Danish IT folk having a reputation for thinking out of the box.

“We have an educational system that provides a framework for creativity and gives plenty of space for stimulating young minds. Different and creative ideas are valued,” says Professor Mogens Kühn Pedersen of Copenhagen Business School, who conducts IT industry research comparing Asia with the West.

Professor Pedersen has been in close contact with the bright minds who have developed some clever things that have become acknowledged worldwide, for instance the developers of Skype.

Søren Steen Rasmussen, who is a partner in Vækstfonden, a government backed fund that invests in budding, innovative companies in Denmark, thinks that Danes are very much self-starters:

“We solve problems without the framework being given in advance. We get things done and it is very rewarding when you are developing things. We achieve more that way than if you had an expert sitting at the top dishing out orders, because then it never gets better than the one at the top.”

New figures from Vækstfonden show that the Danish venture market is among the best in the world in attracting foreign capital.

“We have something that is so innovative that it attracts more investors than anywhere else in the world,” says Søren Steen Rasmussen.

COLLABORATION IS THE WAY FORWARD

According to Mogens Kühn Pedersen, one of the great challenges in the West is that fewer people are taking a degree in IT, while in India and China, IT courses are seeing an influx of students.

That is also the reason for a Danish initiative where major powers in IT have been brought together to create something bigger. In Århus, Jutland, they have created the IT City of Katrinebjerg, a centre for companies, research and education in IT, with 18,000 students and 100 companies.

“Many interesting products and development projects are coming out of this. And we are actually seeing a significant increase in the number of students who want to study computer science,” says Ole Lehrmann, director of the Alexandra Institute, which heads the IT City of Katrinebjerg.

“In Denmark we are good at making collaborations between research, companies and users. Research provides the latest knowledge, companies provide the commercial angle and users ensure that the products can actually be used for something,” explains Ole Lehrmann.

DANE HEADS TEAM DEVELOPING GOOGLE CHROME’S V8 ENGINE

The IT City of Katrinebjerg is also where Google has placed its department developing V8, the engine in Google’s new browser, Chrome.

llustration by Lars Chrois

Lars Bak, Tech Lead Manager at Google, attracted the development department to Århus.

“We wanted Lars Bak on board with us, and he wanted to use Århus as a base for building up his unit, as he thinks there is great engineering talent there, especially by Aarhus University. And since Lars is the one who has the knowledge about virtual machines, which is the core part of Google Chrome’s V8 engine, it was only natural to develop it there,” says Kay Oberback, Google Spokesperson Northern & Central Europe.

Lars Bak was contacted by Google two years ago and asked to build a department which would develop the JavaScript engine, V8, for Chrome – a browser that differs from many competitors’ browsers by having open source codes. Others can see the work that has been done by Lars Bak, his team and all the others who have been involved in the project.

“One of the primary objectives of Chrome is to get innovation into the browser market – we are interested in our competitors benefiting from the code. In that way we can raise the level for all browsers,” says Lars Bak.

The Danish team had to reinvent the wheel in many ways. They had to make an engine for the browser that could execute JavaScript rapidly and efficiently. According to Google’s own analysis, they have succeeded.

Lars Bak, Tech Lead Manager at Google – in Denmark also known as one of the ’Google boys’.

Denmark is hungry for foreign labour

BY MARLENE LYHNE SØRENSEN

Illustration by Lars Chrois

A low crime rate, a good balance between working life and private life, and a bus driver who wakes you up if you are asleep when you reach your destination. These are some of the things foreigners can expect, if they move to Denmark to work. The Danish labour market needs foreign labour, so there are great opportunities to build a career.

The Danish national anthem begins with the words Der er et yndigt land [There is a lovely land]. And indeed it is, with green hills and valleys, gently waving fields of corn and foaming blue sea, although not necessarily lovely enough to coax foreign labour to these shores. But from the Danish business community, the message is clear: foreign labour is wholeheartedly welcome and demographic trends clearly indicate a present and future need.

“Attracting foreign workers hinges on being able to offer a step up the career ladder in relation to what they can otherwise achieve,

and Denmark frequently has some something to offer. There are many job opportunities and a modern management style which gives employees a fairly large say in decision-making. This can be especially attractive to foreigners who have grown up in more authoritarian environments,” says Australian Skip Bowman, who is a consultant at Life in Denmark, a network for foreign workers in Denmark.

Microsoft Development Center, which develops global business systems, is one of the companies in Denmark with a strong interest in attracting foreign labour. The center currently employs 850 people, one third of whom come from foreign countries including Ukraine, Poland, Portugal, Romania, USA and India.

“It has always been our objective to create an international workplace, and because of the shortage of IT specialists in Denmark, we intensified our recruitment efforts outside Denmark’s borders three years ago,” says site leader Charlotte Mark.

Microsoft Development Center offers the opportunity to work in a highly technical environment and the prospect of an international career, which can pave the way for starting up one’s own company.

CONTENTEDNESS COUNTS

But the chance of a challenging and well-paid job is only one side of a successful life in Denmark. It is another matter entirely to offer conditions that encourage foreign workers to stay in the tiny kingdom for an extended period. It is not about fringe benefits, promotion and pay rises, but rather about cinema trips, dinners and friendships, not least for the employee’s spouse and children in those cases where the whole family has moved to Denmark. If families are not content, experience shows that foreign workers leave Denmark within a few years.

“It costs about half a million kroner each time you recruit someone to Denmark, so everyone has an interest in making sure that the family settles in properly,” says Charlotte Mark.

More and more companies have realised that the contentedness of staff and their families needs to be safeguarded, and so they have launched a number of initiatives to make it easier for foreign staff and their families to create networks.

Two years ago, Microsoft started a special integration programme to help make Denmark a pleasant experience. Spouses are offered coaching to ease the path to finding a job, and social events are planned to help expand the family’s network in Denmark.

“We quickly discovered that it was important to involve spouses. If he or she does not settle in, then the entire family will leave,” says Charlotte Mark.

DIVERSITY IS A STRENGTH

The Danish language is one of the challenges that foreigners encounter, for example in relation to contact with public sector authorities and in social contexts, so many companies offer Danish language courses.

One of these is toy manufacturer The LEGO Group, which offers twice-weekly Danish tuition. But as HR consultant Anette Klausen points out:

“Lego’s corporate language is English, so it is not a requirement that our foreign staff can speak Danish. We also think it is important that society is ready to receive foreign nationals, for instance that the tax office and the bank have people who can speak English and that documents are available in English. Fortunately this is largely the case.”

In the development department, The LEGO Group has recruited a third of its staff outside Denmark’s borders for a number of years, and the internationalisation has gradually spread to the rest of the company. Recruitment is carried out in close contact with educational institutions around the world:

“We want to be a company with great diversity, since in our opinion it creates the best conditions for inspired work,” says Anette Klausen.

Jytte Assenholm is personal assistant to The LEGO Group’s foreign staff. She assists when foreign staff need to open a bank account, when the tax authority knocks on the door, or if they need a new place to live:

“We do not want our staff to feel left to fend for themselves. So we have established an Expatriate Club, just as we make living accommodation available to our foreign staff,” says Jytte Assenholm.

CHILDREN CYCLE TO SCHOOL

The LEGO Group is an international brand, just like other major Danish companies such as pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk and shipping concern A.P.Møller-Mærsk, which gives them a head start in the competition for foreign workers. One of the challenges of attracting labour to Denmark is that very few people know much about this small Scandinavian country.

Regarding Denmark’s positive attributes, many newcomers mention the low crime rate and high level of safety, which means for example that you can let your children cycle to school. The LEGO Group is headquartered in Billund, a small provincial town, and several foreign staff have noticed the well-developed public transport system.

“Some come from big cities with a ceaseless myriad of people and traffic. Here in Denmark, several have recounted how they are woken by the bus driver if they have fallen asleep when they reach their destination. It impresses them that the driver gives such attention and service” says Jytte Assenholm.

The lack of corruption and the balance between working life and private life are also often on foreign workers’ positive list when they assess Denmark’s pros and cons. On the other hand, some think that Danes can be difficult to get to know.

“Danes are highly individualistic people, who do not immediately open up to people from other lands. So foreigners must be prepared to venture into many new things and initiate social activities themselves,” says Skip Bowman.

Charlotte Mark from Microsoft agrees. But she thinks it is not difficult for Danes to open up – in most cases it is just a matter of overcoming their shyness:

“I have been contacted by many Danes who would like to help. One wanted to hear whether a couple of the foreign staff would like to sing in the local choir. I am sure there are many out there who are keen to socialise. So it is very important that companies continue to arrange events where newcomers, their families and Danes can meet,” says Charlotte Mark.

I NEVER FEEL FAR FROM HOME IN DENMARK

23 year old Fenella Holden is from London, and has been a designer at The LEGO Group in Denmark since October 2007. She lives in the town of Kolding and expects to stay in Denmark for at least 3-5 years.

HOW HAVE YOU LIKED IT SO FAR?

My experience of Denmark has so far been very positive. I have never felt very far from home, because everybody speaks English, and the culture is not so different from what I am used to in England, so the transition has been quite easy. I think Danish people are quite open and interested in getting to know you. When I go out, people want to chat, and the same thing happened the other day on the train. Also it has been quite easy to find a place to live.

WHAT HAVE THE CHALLENGES BEEN?

Danish is a challenge but luckily I do not have to speak Danish in my job, and outside work most people also speak English, so it is not really a problem. The biggest challenge I think, is the level of prices. Everything is very expensive. And I miss my family sometimes.

WOULD YOU RECOMMEND OTHER FOREIGNERS TO MOVE TO DENMARK FOR WORK?

Yes. I am glad I did not miss out on this opportunity. The job is great and generally it is a rewarding experience living abroad.

TO WHAT EXTENT DO YOU USE THE BENEFITS OFFERED TO EXPATRIATES AT THE LEGO GROUP?

I use the expatriate club and the international network provided at LEGO very much. My whole network is from LEGO. The HR staff have been unbelievably helpful in my relocation to Denmark and I would not have been able to adjust so easily without them.

WHAT ABOUT THE FUTURE?

I do think about staying permanently in Denmark as I feel very happy and settled here and I think it would be a great place to live for a long time.

I HAVE BECOME A MORE INTERESTING PERSON

It has been a long and at times difficult journey, but it has been worth it, says Australian Skip Bowman, who moved to Denmark in 1993. Today he is married, has two children and is a consultant in the Life in Denmark network, which helps to create contact between foreign staff and their families across workplaces in Denmark.

WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST IMPRESSION OF DENMARK?

I came to Denmark for the first time in the summer of 1992. It was a festive time and the highlight was the European Football Championship. The whole country was wrapped up in celebrations and I have never seen so many happy people in Copenhagen’s streets. I was in Denmark for 2 months and got a really positive impression. After a year I decided to move back to Denmark and found a place at Roskilde University to begin studying.

WHAT HAS BEEN GOOD ABOUT YOUR LIFE IN DENMARK?

Denmark quickly became a part of who I am. My investment in the language and culture was huge, but it has paid off. I am a much more interesting person because of the journey. To be a part of two cultures: Australian
and Danish, adds much more than it takes away. But you never stop being homesick. The biggest positives about Denmark are the quality of life and the ambition to make a society that is equal, sustainable and kind. There are also strong professional and academic traditions, and it’s a great place to study and work. Being in Denmark, you are also a part of and close to the rest of Europe.

WHAT ABOUT THE NEGATIVES?

The weather, though traditions like Christmas, candles and the ability to go skiing in nearby countries make up for the long nights. Socially, it was tough at times, though younger Danes, especially at university, are more likely to make you feel welcome. I spent evening after evening trying to listen and understand Danish. It was frustrating and to be honest boring, people were less sensitive than perhaps was fair. But in the main, it was a personal journey and in my case it has been both a challenging and rewarding experience.

Sometimes I miss the cultural diversity of other countries, where difference is celebrated more and where people are more extrovert and socially adventurous and open to making new friends.

WHAT IS YOUR ADVICE TO OTHER FOREIGNERS CONSIDERING MOVING TO DENMARK?

For expats looking for short to medium term work and a limited attachment to Danish culture and language, they need to consider the standard things: Am I really ready or suited to living in a foreign country for an extended period of time? Is my family ready to move and will they be happy?

TANZANIA

Tanzania welcomes the Danish Queen

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY CHARLOTTE LUND DIDERIKSEN

Denmark’s long-term commitment as one of Tanzania’s principal development assistance providers was celebrated when Queen Margrethe visited the country at the beginning of November. In the village of Dakawa in the Morogoro region everything was buzzing with excitement.

Normally, Dakawa in central Tanzania is an ordinary village of mud huts roofed with palm leaves, and winding roads heavily caked in red dust. But on this Tuesday morning in early November, the village looks far from ordinary. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark is paying a visit, and every ounce of energy is being put into making the welcome as festive as possible.

BALLOONS AND BANNERS

House walls, mango trees and even the village’s sole tractor are decorated with bows, flowers, green branches and metre-long banners with the inscription ”Welcome Her Majesty The Queen of Denmark”. These words are also written in large letters across many of the dancers’ white T-shirts, which have been specially made for the occasion.

In the middle of the village a platform has been erected. The right side is decorated with flowers and balloons in green, yellow, blue and black, the colours of the Tanzanian flag. The left side is picked out in a wonderfully contrasting red and white, Denmark’s national colours. Because this is not the queen of an unknown land who is visiting the village. The area has received financial assistance from Denmark for many years to develop its farming.

TIME-SAVING RICE MILL

Denmark has put years of support into establishing a cooperative society of farmers in this locality. Today it has 580 members cultivating an area of around 2,000 hectares. The aim is to enable the export of part of the harvest to other areas, and so start earning money. The norm here has so far been mainly a subsistence economy, which is vulnerable to price rises and bad yields. Money from exporting parts of the yield will give the village the opportunity to save for the lean times.

Dakawa’s principal crop is rice, and shelling the rice was previously very time-consuming work for the women in the village.

”It takes around three hours per day to remove enough rice shells to feed a family, if it is done manually”, says co-operative member Sedi Kwedija. But now it is no longer necessary to spend most of the day shelling rice. With development assistance from Denmark, a rice mill has been built in Dakawa. It quickly shells the rice and saves the women a lot of daily work.

A GREAT DAY

When the official cars with their police escort arrive, the cheering swells, and when Queen Margrethe steps out of the black four-wheel drive vehicle decorated with the flags of both nations, the noise is deafening. Dancers and singers cheer the Danish Queen, while the audience applauds. When Her Majesty is finally seated in the decorated red plastic chair on the platform, everyone’s hands are waving in the air.

After speeches and a gift presenting ceremony, the time comes for the queen to stroll down a section of the village’s main street to take a closer look at the processing of the rice – and to visit a selected family in one of the village’s huts.

”It is a great day for Dakawa to have a visit from such a fine lady,” states Sedi Kwedija, as he presses his way through the crowd with his arms aloft, following as closely as he can in the footsteps of Queen Margrethe.

Shelling rice was previously a manual task which took several hours a day.

Tanzania: Danish development assistance with special significance

BY ULRIKKE MOUSTGAARD

For more than 45 years, Denmark has supported Tanzania, which is both the first and largest recipient of Danish development assistance. Today Tanzania exemplifies Denmark’s involvement in the world’s poor countries

When the Danish Head of State HM Queen Margrethe set foot on Tanzanian soil in November 2008 on her first official state visit to the country, she was following directly in her father’s footsteps.

Her father, King Frederik IX, visited Tanzania several times – both on official state visits and privately – and he also received a visit himself from Tanzania’s former President, Julius Kambarage Nyerere.

The two men had a close relation to each other – and not without reason.

In 1962, Nyerere became Tanzania’s first president following the country’s independence. At the same time, Denmark chose Tanzania as the very first recipient of the then new Danish development assistance to the third world.

Tanzania and Denmark have had close connections ever since. For more than 45 years Denmark has been among the largest bilateral donors to Tanzania, and Tanzania is the country to which Denmark gives the largest share its long-term development assistance.

For Denmark, the many years of involvement in Tanzania have brought a wealth of experience. From the time the first school was built with Danish money and right up to today, Danish development assistance for Tanzania has had special significance. The country is a living example of how Danish development assistance has evolved over almost five decades to achieve a big league position in international development assistance.

To the ordinary Dane too, Tanzania is something special and for many, symbolises Denmark’s development assistance.

“In colonial times, the British liked to refer to India as “the Jewel of the Empire”. With all the reservations regarding the negative associations of this expression today, one can say that Tanzania became the “jewel” of Danish development assistance – and that is meant in a positive way”, says Professor Holger Bernt Hansen of the Centre for African Studies at the University of Copenhagen. He is the grand old man of Danish development assistance, chairman of the board of Danida (Danish International Development Agency) and as an Africa expert he has followed Denmark’s involvement in Tanzania at close range from the start.

AGRICULTURE AND EDUCATION

The first time Holger Bernt Hansen visited Tanzania was in 1964, when the first Danish development assistance projects in the country – focused especially on schools and agriculture –were taking shape.

In the early 1960s, together with the other countries in the Nordic region, Denmark built a large educational centre in Kibaha, about 100 kilometres from Dar es Salaam. It consisted of an agricultural college, a health centre and an upper secondary school with space for 500 boarding pupils. The school’s staff was mainly stationed personnel from the Nordic region.

The project was a great success and laid the foundation for Denmark’s further involvement in the East African country.

Danish development assistance was at the time on its maiden voyage in international collaboration. Indeed Denmark had had missionaries in both Asia and Africa since the mid-1800s, and ten years before, private aid organisations had started to dispatch workers to India and Ghana in particular. But Denmark did not have a state aid programme as such, and was feeling its way as it went along.

Denmark started by supporting a few projects in Tanzania, usually with one-off development assistance, in the same geographic area and with stationed Danish staff. The money was typically used for building schools, hospital units, teacher training colleges and agricultural colleges.

Agriculture and education were Denmark’s preferred areas for providing development assistance, because this was where its strength lay.

MUTUAL JOY

The incipient collaboration between Denmark and Tanzania was a win-win situation, of sorts.

For Tanzania, Danish interest was an obvious help in its efforts to create a new, independent country based on socialist precepts. The newly incumbent President Nyerere admired the Nordic welfare model, and was happy to accept Danish development assistance.

For Denmark, Tanzania was an opportunity to spread the joyful message of democracy, agricultural development and education, with which Denmark itself was greatly occupied. Denmark felt it had something to offer.

“We could teach and pass on good ideas from our own development, especially our agricultural development”, says Holger Bernt Hansen.

Tanzania was not unknown in Denmark at the time. Denmark’s largest company A.P. Møller had a sugar factory in Tanzania. And Danes knew of Julius Nyerere. To Denmark, Tanzania’s president was the personification of freedom, independence and change – just as Ghandi was in India, which Denmark also supported. President Nyerere also looked favourably on Danish ideas of solidarity, cooperative movements, high schools and adult education. His visions for reforming the educational system in Tanzania fitted in perfectly with what Denmark believed it was good at.

So many Danes supported the idea of Denmark giving aid to Tanzania, including the Danish business community and the agricultural sector.

FOCUS ON POVERTY

When Denmark began providing development assistance to Tanzania in 1962, it was thought that development would happen largely by itself, so long as one took the right initiatives and showed a good example. Denmark quickly moved into Tanzania, and it was thought that it would quickly move out again. But theory and practice turned out to be different.

Poverty in Tanzania had not lessened over the years that Denmark provided development assistance to the country, social inequalities were still entrenched and the oil crisis in the 1970s didn’t help. So from the 1970s onwards, Denmark focused on poverty in its development assistance.

Combating poverty became a key priority in all Denmark’s development assistance work, and in Tanzania it meant that Denmark strengthened its efforts in the most impoverished parts of the country, namely the rural areas where Denmark wanted to help “the poorest of the poor”.

“It became a Danish hallmark. Combating poverty was the distinctive feature of Danish development assistance”, says Holger Bernt Hansen.

Clean water, roads and free education were aimed at the poorest of all. Support had to be given to the poorest farmer, who starved and had hardly a cow to his name.

FROM PROJECT SUPPORT TO SECTOR SUPPORT

If enough schools, water pumps and hospitals are built, development will happen by itself. That is roughly how you could describe Denmark’s development assistance approach in the first 10 or 20 years. But Tanzania knew that Denmark was wrong.

There is no point in providing good farming equipment, if no one knows how to repair it when it breaks. Nor is it any use investing in a water pump, if no one in the local area takes responsibility for maintaining it, because people simply become accustomed to getting a new one when it breaks. Or to believe that by building a few schools, education will spread through the population like ripples in the water.

So through the 1970s and 1980s, Denmark adjusted its way of providing development assistance by gradually shifting from individual projects to larger programmes.

“Forward planning was implemented. A policy and development plan for the agricultural sector was made, and both Tanzanians and the relevant ministries were increasingly included”, explains Holger Bernt Hansen.

Denmark also gradually started supporting whole sectors rather than isolated projects. The idea was that if you supported the whole instead of component parts, development assistance would become more effective. You cannot improve the population’s health just by building a hospital. Staff must also be trained, equipment is needed and the building must be maintained.

As an Africa expert, Professor Holger Bernt Hansen of the Centre for African Studies at Copenhagen University, has followed Denmark’s involvement in Tanzania at close range from the start. Photo Karsten Bidstrup.

SPECIAL COUNTRIES AND CONSIDERATIONS

In the 1980s, Denmark became much more focused on the efficiency of development assistance in Tanzania. The same idea spread to other Danish development assistance. Denmark supported projects and sectors in several countries – as many as 60 or 70 – and it was thought that the money would be better spent if it were distributed to some specially selected countries.

“There were projects everywhere and it wasn’t possible to overview them”, says Holger Bernt Hansen.

Denmark therefore introduced a collaboration programme: 18 countries – today it is 16 – were selected to receive Danish bilateral support. Tanzania was one of them. A Danish embassy was established in all the countries to be close to the programmes and also to include local people in the development work instead of the many expensive stationed Danish staff.

At the same time, Denmark became occupied with the environment, equality and human rights, so these areas were integrated in all Danish-supported development activities. In Tanzania it meant that women were thought into the development assistance projects. The thinking was that if women in Tanzania didn’t get the same educational and job opportunities as men, the society would not be able to develop. So women had to be involved in order for a project to receive Danish support.

CHANGING TO OWNERSHIP

Despite its modest size, Denmark has received high praise for many years for its development assistance work, which has been judged the world’s best several times. Danish development assistance experts are present throughout the world and Tanzania is no exception.

In the 1990s, Denmark realised that there were probably too many Danish experts in Tanzania. Twice as much money was spent on foreign experts in Tanzania as on salaries

to locally employed Tanzanians. A report prepared by Denmark together with the rest of the Nordic region, showed that the Nordic experts in Tanzania were capable enough at their work, but not quite as capable in transferring their skills to the Tanzanians. As a result the country was actually weakened, because the projects and institutions that were built in Tanzania could not function without the assistance of foreign experts.

So Denmark changed its development assistance. Now the new word was “ownership”. The number of stationed Danes was cut and local labour was used instead. It matched well with the trend in international society to increasingly focus on the need of developing countries in Africa to take over the management of their affairs and responsibility for their development.

Denmark also started to join other donors in Tanzania in making its development assistance more effective. They agreed to put an end to development assistance for individual projects. Instead of several donors putting money into individual projects spread across all sectors, donors now concentrated their efforts on a few selected sectors.

SUPPORT FOR THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY

Denmark is not the only country that has developed a fondness for Tanzania.

Many donors are present in the country, which has been completely dependent on donor aid for many years: almost half the state budget is financed from donor funds.

For Denmark, this fact has given rise to serious reflection on the sustainability and effectiveness of development assistance, which is one of the reasons Denmark became a staunch advocate of ownership.

This concern has also resulted in Denmark becoming a firm advocate of providing

development assistance to the private sector in Tanzania. To set the economic wheels in motion in Tanzania and make the country more autonomous, the business community had to be involved, Denmark thought.

So in 1998, Denmark established a business sector programme in Tanzania. The purpose was to create jobs and economic growth. The recipe included improvements in Tanzania’s vocational training programmes so that they matched the needs of the business community; help for small and medium-sized enterprises to obtain knowledge and technology; greater access for the poor to take up loans to invest in for example a cow, a sewing-machine or a shop; and support for building the necessary institutions, including unions and Tanzania’s Maritime and Commercial Court. The latter was especially important in order to attract investments to the country. Issues such as the right to land needed to be dealt with – and it was necessary to be able to deal with them quickly.

A MAJOR SUCCESS

The programme was the first of its kind in Danish development assistance. Denmark had never previously had a development programme that targeted the business sector of a poor country. Not surprisingly, Danida met many protests. Many thought that the poor would be neglected if the business community received the development assistance. But
the experiment turned out to be a great success. Tanzania’s economic growth increased. Danida has now applied the scheme to other countries such as Ghana and Vietnam, where Denmark provides aid.

Holger Bernt Hansen thinks that the support of the private sector is one of the great Danish successes in Tanzania. Another has been the collaboration between the two countries concerning democratisation – not least when Tanzania went from a one-party system to a multi-party system.

But there are still challenges to be faced in Tanzania, especially the country’s dependence on development assistance. Perhaps more foreign investment could solve part of the problem. The Danish business community is in any event just as interested in Tanzania as the agricultural sector was when Denmark started its long liaison with the country in 1962.

When the Danish Queen recently made her state visit to Tanzania, she was accompanied by a Danish business delegation of 40 companies with plans to explore business opportunities in Tanzania.

Danish refrigeration success helps Tanzania

TEXT AND PHOTO BY CHARLOTTE LUND DIDERIKSEN

UniCool’s new air conditioning system, seen here being delivered to a customer, uses less energy than conventional systems.

Development work and sound business principles go hand in hand at the Danish refrigeration company UniCool A/S. Over the last 3 years, UniCool has focused on training local Tanzanians as refrigeration technicians and has created a successful and locally embedded company.

Until recently, most of the high-tech work in Tanzania was carried out by South African and Arab contractors travelling the country with their staff for limited periods. The implication of this was that all the experience, the important specialised technical knowledge and the payment for the work, left the country again together with the foreign companies, when the work in Tanzania had been completed. Tanzania was maintained in its dependency on foreign experts every time high-tech challenges needed to be met – and Tanzanian technicians were deterred from acquiring knowledge and competences to manage on the global market.

But in the refrigeration industry, the negative spiral has changed. Denmark’s UniCool has a different business strategy: instead of bringing its own experts from Denmark, it employs local people from the country’s technical colleges and gives them comprehensive training as refrigeration technicians. It means that at UniCool, it is the Tanzanians themselves who gain both the expert knowledge and salary for the high-tech tasks that are carried out in their own country.

OUTDATED TEXTBOOKS

UniCool A/S produces refrigeration technology for cooling electrical installations such as server rooms and telephone exchanges. It is important that this kind of high-tech equipment is prevented from overheating, since outages can have serious effects e.g. the country’s telephone network can be put out of action for days. It requires extensive specialised knowledge to work with refrigeration technology, and that knowledge needs to be present in the country to deal with any problems that may occur.

But it has not always been easy to transform inexperienced local people into high-tech equipment technicians.

”The books in Tanzania’s technical colleges are more than 40 years old, so they cannot teach anything about the technology in use today. It can be fatal not to have the necessary knowledge when you work with electricity”, says refrigeration technician Jeppe Bjerre, who is a supervisor at UniCool in Tanzania.

The company tackled the problem by sending its staff on a three month course in Denmark and by bringing a Danish technical college teacher to Tanzania to provide them with training. The initiative was successful and UniCool’s Tanzanian staff are today significantly better at carrying out their work.

”The people here are certainly not daft. They have just had shockingly poor opportunities to develop their competences. We can clearly see this with our staff, because they have progressed a very long way since we started here”, states Jeppe Bjerre.

AFRICA HAS POTENTIAL

The African experience has so far turned out extremely well for the Danish refrigeration company. Today, UniCool is in high demand, with a full order book and an integrated collaboration with Africa’s leading telecom giants. For its part, Tanzania has gained a set of competent refrigeration installation experts with specialist knowledge that was previously lacking – and they are staying in the country.

The benefits go both ways. UniCool’s director Ole Hoffmann Hansen comments that from the Danish perspective they have gained a much more varied view of Africa’s population and potential than the disheartening picture that TV broadcasts of war and hunger can otherwise display.

”Development is really happening fast here, and Africa is full of resources which have been ignored for a long time”, says Ole Hoffmann Hansen. He thinks that the knowledge and the jobs that follow in the wake of foreign investments will actively propel African countries onto the global market.

T-shirts create development

BY CHARLOTTE LUND DIDERIKSEN

Photo: Kibotrade.

Organic clothing made under proper conditions can help push Africa in the right direction for economic development. So thinks the Danish company Kibotrade, which produces T-shirts in Tanzania for quality-conscious consumers all over the world.

It all started with a love of Africa and became a flourishing company, which has created jobs on the impoverished continent.

After having worked in Tanzania’s commercial court, Ivar Rosenkrantz could clearly see the potential in creating a company in the country, and that idea has come to fruition. With help from the internationally known Danish fashion firm Samsøe Samsøe, which sells the product, the right local partner with a solid knowledge of business conditions in Tanzania, and financial start-up support from Danish development assistance, Ivar Rosenkrantz can today call himself managing director of Kibotrade, a successful manufacturer of T-shirts based in Dar es Salaam.

SUSTAINABLE AMBITIONS

The basic idea of Kibotrade is to show the world that organic quality products, made under proper working conditions, easily can be produced in Africa – a continent which otherwise has no great tradition as a destination for foreign investment. Ivar Rosenkrantz believes that sustainable business solutions can develop a poor country just as much as development assistance from the large aid agencies. He also says that the thought of African investment is very new to most investors.

”People are usually very surprised to hear that products of such quality can advantageously be produced in Africa. It is normally South East Asia that has this market,” states Ivar Rosenkrantz.

But they can produce them. And to such an extent that Kibotrade will soon gain the much sought-after SA8000- certificate, which demonstrates a company’s high standard in working conditions, safety and environmental responsibility. In addition, the employed sewing machinists, of whom two thirds are women, are offered further training and courses in English. With the introduction of these working conditions, Kibotrade hopes that it can become a role model for locally-owned companies in the country.

The sustainable dimension of the company strategy can also be seen in the decision to spend 10 per cent of its revenue on school projects in the country’s SOS Children’s Villages. Kibotrade does this to give Tanzanians the educational ballast required to get into the labour market and help to create economic improvement.

INVEST WITH YOUR HEART

The road to success in Tanzania is not without stones, and Ivar Rosenkrantz emphasises that the desire to create development in Africa is a significant argument for the company’s choice of Tanzania as the production place.

”We have had several logistic problems in the country. For instance the port, from where we export our clothes to Europe, is burdened with bureaucracy which slows down our working procedures. So it has naturally been a challenge for us,” says Ivar Rosenkrantz, who points out that it is generally still easier to get goods produced in Asia. On the other hand, with African investments one can really make a difference on a continent which in many areas is left out of global economic trade.

”It is simply the case that with Kibotrade we are doing a piece of profit- and business-oriented development work, where the investment is made just as much with the heart as the head,” ends Ivar Rosenkrantz, managing director of Kibotrade in Tanzania.

Bang & Olufsen rides the Blue Ocean

BY NADIA LOUISE KRISTENSEN

The interior of an Aston Martin DBS fitted with the Bang & Olufsen BeoSound DBS. Photo: Bang & Olufsen

When Bang & Olufsen hatched the idea of making luxury sound systems for luxury cars eight years ago, the Blue Ocean Strategy had not even been invented – but it has become a genuine Blue Ocean adventure all the same.

It is as if The Eagles are playing for me personally – that they are standing on the bonnet and performing magic on their instruments, while I am sitting back and relaxing in soft, beige leather upholstery. I am passenger in an Audi A8, in which Denmark’s Bang & Olufsen Automotive has been tasked with placing 14 loudspeakers in the doors at the front and back to give a sound which makes me feel that I have won a ticket to a one-person concert. The best part is that I can choose myself who the performers are.

And I am not the only one who is thrilled by the sound. James Bond himself enjoys a Bang & Olufsen system when he races around at lightning speed in his Aston Martin DBS, in which the system has become the standard.

Many thousands of car owners enjoy the sublime sound of a Bang & Olufsen sound system while they cruise to and from work, meetings and their homes. One in five of those who buy an Audi A8, Q7, R8, A5, S5 or Q5 drive away from the showroom with Bang & Olufsen inscribed on the loudspeakers.

Bang & Olufsen is most known for designing exclusive loudspeakers, TVs and music systems for the home, but over the years the Danish company has extended its business activities into everything from stethoscopes to sound systems for cars. The latter has turned out to be a real Blue Ocean adventure. The Blue Ocean Strategy is one where a company minimises competition from others by being unique, and in that way creates a Blue Ocean. A Red Ocean conversely symbolises a company surrounded by tough competition.

Initially there was no special competition in the area where Bang & Olufsen is skilled.

“We were surprised that in fact there wasn’t anyone making really good and exquisite sound systems. It was actually strange, when you think about how much time you spend in your car. People who have a lot of money are often not at home, but they still pay for expensive loudspeakers for their home,” says Jens Peter Zinck, who is director of Bang & Olufsen Automotive and was part of the new business group which in 2000 took on the task of finding new business areas for Bang & Olufsen.

The best car sound system you could get for an Audi A8 at the time cost around EUR 1,000.

“We could not find sound systems that used exquisite materials or design, and the sound was not impressive either. There was simply nothing that matched the level one has at home. And the sound systems that were around didn’t fit with the image of luxury cars. It was in fact a completely unexploited business area,” says Jens Peter Zinck.

The point was that an Audi A8, for example, costs upwards of EUR 100,000, and people are happy to pay EUR 4,000 for leather seats and even more for a more powerful engine, so wouldn’t Audi owners pay in the region of EUR 6,000 to get a stylish and music-friendly sound system?

180 DEGREE SOUND

In the years leading up to the birth of the idea of luxury sound systems, Bang & Olufsen invested solidly in acoustics research – not just to make the most stylish loudspeakers, but also the best.

“We made a breakthrough, which in all modesty we consider one of the world’s best” says Jens Peter Zinck.

The breakthrough was called BeoLab 5 and it moved into the first homes in 2003. The loudspeakers have been under development for a long time, and one of the unique features is that they emit sound through an angle of 180 degrees, which means that you don’t have to sit in the middle of the sofa to get the best sound or move the loudspeakers if you want to sit somewhere else. It is exactly this functionality that has been adopted in the sound systems that Bang & Olufsen makes for Audi and Aston Martin. The technology is called acoustic lenses. When you start the sound system, two round acoustic lenses rise up from the dashboard and send the sound out into the car. Without them, the sound would hit the roof and floor, and destroy the lovely sound.

But what about the rumble from the road or the drumming of the rain? Bang & Olufsen has taken that into account. The system automatically adjusts the frequencies so that the listener gains the same sound experience regardless of what the weather is like, or what the road surface the wheels are rolling on.

Jens Peter Zinck, Director of Bang & Olufsen Automotive, behind the wheel of an Audi A8 fitted with Bang & Olufsen’s Advanced Sound System. The system automatically adjusts the sound settings to give the listener the same experience regardless of the surrounding noise. Photo: Bang & Olufsen

THREE TOUGH YEARS

But although Bang & Olufsen had the competences to conquer a new market, it was nothing like as easy as they had hoped for.

“We went round the world with our PowerPoint presentation. People thought it sounded exciting, but they didn’t really believe there was a market for it – it was too expensive,” says Jens Peter Zinck.

A German marketing company even predicted that the market for high-end sound systems was negligible – only 100 per year.

“In the initial process, we debated whether it was the right business areas we had plunged into. But all the time, there was a belief that it was a good business area,” says Jens Peter Zinck.

One of the automobile manufacturers they courted was Audi – and now Bang & Olufsen changed the strategy. They bought an Audi and built in the sound system so that Audi could experience the sound for themselves. And the breakthrough came on 24 October 2003.

“We got the CEO of Audi, Dr. Winterkorn, into our Audi A8. We had also prepared a large number of PowerPoint slides, which we wanted to show him afterwards. But after the demonstration in the A8, he knew what he wanted and just said: “das machen wir”. It was the best day of my career,” reveals Jens Peter Zinck.

In November 2005, the first Audi A8 owners could drive home with a Bang & Olufsen Advanced Sound System.

The German marketing company which predicted annual sales of 100 sound systems were left red-faced. In the first year, Bang & Olufsen sold 4,000 units.

“It exceeded both our own and Audi’s expectations. It generated a lot of good PR for both companies. Audi was written about in places which otherwise don’t write about cars, just as car magazines suddenly wrote about us,” says Jens Peter Zinck.

Since then, some of Audi’s lower-priced models have followed suit. The name is Bang & Olufsen Sound System and it costs about EUR 1,000 before tax.

Two years ago, Aston Martin agreed to having Bang & Olufsen’s system as a standard in its DBS model, which many know from Agent 007 – James Bond. But before that became a reality, Bang & Olufsen had to make a live demonstration of the sound. Aston Martin’s director Dr. Bez kindly lent his DB9 to Bang & Olufsen – and just like Audi he was seduced when he heard and saw the result.

“One of the things we have learned from this process is that you cannot convince the automobile manufacturers with PowerPoint – you have to sell with feelings. And it’s no use demonstrating a sound system in a competitor’s car – it only makes them grumpy,” says Jens Peter Zinck.

The German automobile magazine Auto-focus has just given Bang & Olufsen the best rating in a number of reviews of sound systems for luxury cars. Altogether, Bang & Olufsen’s sound system is one of Bang & Olufsen’s products which have generated most media coverage. And it’s not bad when Agent 007 drives around in a car with a Bang & Olufsen sound system in the new James Bond movie.

“If nothing else it gives some self-confidence. And in a dialogue with a potential customer, it is interesting to show images from the James Bond movie, where you can see our sound system”, says Jens Peter Zinck.

FROM BLUE OCEAN TO RED OCEAN

Eight years after the new business group discovered a product with its own Blue Ocean, the number of staff has grown. At the time, they were a handful who knocked on doors around the world. Today around 100 people are working in a facility which little resembles a place where luxury sound systems are made. In a company where design is almost a religion one might expect something more fancy. The director’s office is just big enough for a desk and a small meeting table, and ventilation consists of opening the window.

“It is part of being a new company where we need to be very cost conscious,” says Jens Peter Zinck.

Bang & Olufsen has so far had the market to itself. And the review from the German automobile magazine shows that competitors do not quite yet match Bang & Olufsen. But competitors are slowly creeping in, with both established and new companies starting to produce better and more expensive sound systems for cars.

“The ocean will become red at some point. Red tracks are starting to appear here and there. So we need to constantly develop ourselves. And that is fortunately an exercise which Bang & Olufsen is very used to. So we just have to advance.”

And in the more secret rooms in the basement, advances are being made. Sound systems are being built in completely new and still secret car models. Jens Peter Zinck predicts that the next step will be to think the car’s sound system into the home’s sound system, so that if you download a song to your computer in your living room in the evening, it will automatically be in your car when you drive to work the next day.

“The car needs to be thought of as another room in the house – which happens to have wheels,” states Jens Peter Zinck.

Where Bang & Olufsen’s next Blue Ocean is hiding, Jens Peter Zinck will naturally not disclose. He will however reveal that Bang & Olufsen Automotive will end the current financial year with black numbers on the bottom line and continued growth. The company has just acquired a new partner – Mercedes AMG – we are only told that it is something to do with sound. And then Bang & Olufsen Automotive sees a partner or two more in the future.

“One or two partners in total are too few and too vulnerable. But to maintain our brand positioning, we will exclusively work with up to for example five premium car brands. And each sound system will continue to be unique and individually developed to exactly the car in which it is installed,” says Jens Peter Zinck.

Advertising to the brain

BY INGE KJÆRGAARD

Martin Lindstrom, Danish marketing guru and author behind the Buy-ology book.

Marketing is no longer “just” based on interview surveys and clever messages that engage consumers’ emotions. The brain has come into play – and the name of the game is neuromarketing.

Can warnings about death make people smoke more? Apparently. Experiments have shown that warnings on cigarette packs do not make people smoke less – they actually stimulate smokers to smoke more. This surprising discovery was published in October in a new book about a new concept in the branding world: neuromarketing, which is where science meets marketing. You measure in the brain the advertisements that work – and those that don’t. And one of the things the book deals with is smoking.

The writer of the book, which is entitled Buyology, is the international marketing guru Martin Lindstrom. The Dane, who lives in Australia and travels the world, is dealing with the interesting cocktail of science and marketing. It throws new light on how we decide what we want to buy, from food and cigarettes to mobile phones, or how we vote for political candidates, and why we do it.

Martin Lindstrom got the idea for the book and the experiments when he was working on his previous book BRANDsense.

“I realized that it is almost impossible to interview people about their relationship with their senses – we simply don’t have the vocabulary it takes to express things. Shortly thereafter I happened to read an article in Forbes where neuromarketing was written up as a cover story. That’s when I realized – this is it – I have to create Project Buyology,” says Martin Lindstrom.

Professor Gemma Calvert of Bath University in the UK has conducted some of the experiments on which the book is based. And she also sees great potential in using neurology in that way.

“I saw problems with focus groups – people affect each other – and they affect each other’s answers. Perhaps you get the answer you would like to hear – but it is not necessarily the truth. Perhaps people just say what they believe they think, or perhaps they find it unpleasant to say what they really think. If we don’t see through these things and look into the brain, we won’t find out what people really think,” she says.

SURPRISING RESULTS

For such a small area which has been examined, scanned and discussed for so many years, scientists still do not know much about the brain. But new discoveries are constantly being made – and the Buyology book is a further leap in research.

Up to now, the vast majority of marketing, advertising and branding strategies have been based on quantitative and qualitative studies. But the fact is that about 80% of our purchases are unconscious – and we actually cannot quite explain why we buy a product, even when we are specifically asked in a study. It can mean that a company pours millions into an advertising campaign that perhaps only partly works.

Over the last three years, Martin Lindstrom has made a comprehensive study using sophisticated techniques, but even a marketing guru like himself who has worked professionally with the subject for many years, was surprised by the results.

“I was surprised by the fact that subliminal advertising works even better when we’re not aware of it. I had a feeling that it worked, but that it is so powerful as I learned throughout the experiments was a shocker, I mean we’ve in fact discovered that subliminal advertising is more powerful than ordinary ads, logos, TV commercials, you name it,” he says.

When Martin Lindstrom hatched the idea for the book, he contacted Professor Gemma Calvert, who thought the experiments he had in mind were interesting.

“I have worked with marketing before – and we had some experiments that we could use for Martin Lindstrom’s book. So it was not unfamiliar to me at all. The results on the other hand were quite surprising,” says Gemma Calvert.

THE RESEARCH

Martin Lindstrom used two different techniques in the experiment – one technique using EEG, another using fMRI – two fundamentally different techniques, since one measuring brain waves while the other measures blood oxygenation.

“We combined the neuromarketing research programme with quantitative questions before and after the scanning to compare the neuro-results with the verbal results,” Gemma Calvert explains.

fMRI involves volunteers lying in a gigantic scanner wearing headsets and in one case tubes in the nose for exposure to smells. At the same time, the volunteer is looking at illustrations or watching movies on a large screen and has a finger placed on a panel to give responses. The responses are used to detect where important reactions are taking place during the test and track them in the brain maps. The other experiment involves volunteers wearing helmets – again while watching TV shows or other stimuli – all signals in both instances are recorded in giant computers and thereafter scientifically evaluated.

It might seem a bit strange that a marketing man suddenly starts thinking about high tech scanning.

“It’s kind of natural, I’ve done this for many years. My first book was about the internet. I didn’t have a clue about the internet in 1995, but I learned about it and combined this with branding and created a new discipline. The second book was about retail, same story. The third about kids – again I had little knowledge about kids, but a lot of knowledge about brands,” says Martin Lindstrom. “And now neuroscience. I tend to stay 50% within my field and stretch myself 50% into a totally new one in order to expand the field overall.”

PROBLEMATICS

But bringing neurology into the world of marketing raises another, ethical issue.

Will consumers’ minds be taken over if the advertising industry suddenly starts scanning their brains and targeting their advertisements accordingly? Is it not a slippery slope?

Martin Lindstrom believes it is an area that will develop rapidly – and that companies will make extensive use of it. And that is exactly why he has raised the issue and brought it into the public domain.

“This helps the ordinary consumer to understand what really goes on. And it helps the governments to set the regulations and laws,” says Martin Lindstrom.

But naturally it is a giant bonus to companies. It can help them to understand what really works – and what is a complete waste of money.

“Advertising as we know it needs to change. We’ve reached a level where probably 80 percent of all communication today is a waste of money, the problem is that we don’t know which 80 percent. We’ve now learned that the future of the logo is kind of fading away, we’ve learned that most of the methods now used for almost 100 years are out of the window, kind of neat to know considering that around 100 billion dollars are spent on this every year,” says Martin Lindstrom.

But he also thinks we should be careful. “There should most definitely be rules around neuromarketing and guidelines for who you can scan, how and what you can expose people to. There should also be rules for the type of products you can test, tobacco for example. It should not be allowed to be included in neuromarketing tests, in my opinion,” he says.

Gemma Calvert also thinks that the experiments Buyology is based on are important to consumer protection.

“We make people aware of the techniques companies are using. Naturally everything is open to corruption, but when companies can use scanning to affect our purchases, it is important that we find out how to counteract it,” she says.

The Buy-ology book among new releases in a New York bookstore.

Denmark can weather the financial crisis

BY SENIOR ECONOMIST FRANK ØLAND HANSEN, DANSKE BANK

Illustration by Lars Chrois

The subprime crisis has turned into a global financial crisis that will affect all countries around the globe, including Denmark. Global growth will be weak next year and unemployment will rise in most countries. Fortunately Denmark is likely to weather the current crisis relatively well, as it has entered the crisis from a very strong position.

Denmark has had fiscal surpluses for the past ten years and during this decade public debt has been reduced substantially from 81% of GDP to just around 26%. The fiscal surplus – around 5% of GDP in 2005-07 – has been one of the largest in Europe for several years. The current account has also showed substantial surpluses for several years. In particular, Denmark, as an oil-exporting country and a major shipping nation, has benefited from both high oil prices and elevated freight rates.

Unemployment in Denmark has fallen continuously for more than three years to the lowest level since 1974 – just 44,800 people, or 1.6 % of the labour force. This is well below the structural level, which implies that if unemployment stayed this low wages would accelerate and competitiveness worsen. Denmark’s economy was just a few degrees from overheating.

This is not to say that Denmark is unaffected by the financial crisis. In October Denmark experienced a small krone-crisis. It resulted from the withdrawal of foreign portfolio investment rather than outright speculation against the Danish krone (which is fixed to the euro). Denmark’s National Bank nevertheless decided to hike the interest rate twice and did not follow when the European Central Bank lowered its policy rate. The exchange rate has been almost unaffected, but the foreign reserves were drained by about EUR 4bn.

Falling global demand has resulted in sharply falling oil prices and freight rates. This impacts negatively on Danish export revenues. Danish exports are nevertheless performing quite well on Denmark’s major export markets. The domestic slowdown is simultaneously pulling imports down, so the current account is likely to stay in surplus, although the very large current account surpluses of the past are not expected to be seen for years to come.

Falling oil and share prices and the ongoing economic slowdown will also reduce the fiscal budget surplus substantially. In fact, it is possible that Denmark will see a small fiscal deficit next year – the first in eleven years. This is partly a result of the automatic stabilisers: in economic downturns fiscal expenditure should increase while revenues decrease. This makes the fiscal budget quite volatile, but it also helps to dampen the business cycle.

Economic growth may turn negative next year, but most Danes will still see a substantial increase in their disposable income due to planned tax cuts and wage increases. Nevertheless, due to the elevated level of uncertainty and losses on both the housing and the stock market consumers are likely to be restrained. The unemployment level is likely to bottom out in the near future, and is expected climb toward 100,000 people (3.2%) in two years’ time. This is still a lower unemployment level than many countries have entered the crisis with.

If the impact of the financial crisis on Denmark becomes more severe than expected, the good fiscal position means that the government has substantial elbowroom to put the economy back on track. But for now it should keep its powder dry. As long as unemployment is at historical lows, an expansive fiscal policy would hamper Denmark’s competitiveness.

Although economic prospects have turned to the worse, Denmark is still in a very fortunate position and is likely to weather the crisis relatively well. And of course, the negative impact of the financial crisis will not be allowed to derail Denmark’s strong ambitions on both climate policies and development aid.

COMPANY PROFILES

In the next issue of Focus Denmark

WORLD CLASS AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH

In the first 2009 issue of Focus Denmark we take a close look at agricultural research in Denmark. One of the research centres we will focus on is Research Centre Foulum. It is one of the largest agricultural research centres in the world. Foulum carries out interdisciplinary research, i.e. ecology, animal husbandry production and welfare. In the area of animal husbandry the facilities include livestock buildings, livestock/herds, a foodstuff factory and a slaughterhouse. Research into cattle, pigs, mink, sheep and poultry is emphasized. The area of plant production includes facilities for experimental cultivation as well as research in applied cropping systems and specialized facilities.

ROBOT FARM

Agricultural machinery is becoming steadily more advanced, not only for handling things like slurry, which has to comply with strict environmental rules, but also robots for weeding, milking and feeding. In southern Denmark a robot cluster called Robocluster has been established as a growth initiative for the robotics and automation industry. The aim is to expand the robotics sector by ensuring optimal conditions for innovation in new as well as existing enterprises and to encourage highly-trained personnel to stay in the region. Robocluster integrates the activities of private, public and academic organisations to promote development and innovation in the robotics and automation industry in southern Denmark. Read more about agricultural machines and robots in the March 09 issue of Focus Denmark.

DANISH COOKING IN STAR QUALITY

Photo: Scanpix Denmark

The regeneration of lost Nordic traditions, cutting-edge techniques and assiduous sourcing of native Scandinavian ingredients are the defining hallmarks of the Danish restaurant, Noma. Hallmarks that have brought Noma to a tenth place among the fifty best restaurants in Pellegrino’s 2008 listing. And Danish ambitions are high. A Bocuse d’Or Academy with a foundation to support Danish cooks in international competitions has just been set up under the protection of His Royal Highness Prince Henrik. Read more about this and how Danish cooking travels the world in the March 09 issue of Focus Denmark.