The Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce Georgia strengthens economic trade, commerce and investment between Sweden and the State of Georgia, creates a distinctive networking platform for the international business community, and provides a forum for cultural outreach and education.

Georgia is the place to be, it offers international business partners a thriving community of global commerce and the most culturally diverse environment in the region. Georgia is the crossroads of the US by air, land and sea. With the world’s largest airport, two deep water ports, and the most extensive surface transportation network in the country, Georgia can provide you access to over 80 percent of the U.S. industrial market within a couple of days.

Whether you are looking for business contacts, need trade related information, or have an interest in the Swedish culture, you will benefit from what Georgia and SACC-Georgia can offer.

Skaltek Factory Tour

Join us May 24th for the Factory Tour and Networking Event of Atlanta-based Swedish cable and packing company Skaltek, Inc.

Come and witness how thinking differently and choosing alternative business methods can create great success!

Last Friday (May 11^th), The Swedish Incubators & Science Parks (SISP) visited the Coca-Cola Company and Georgia Aquarium together with the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce, Georgia. SISP is a Swedish non-profit membership-based organization and had been attending NBIA’s International Conference on Business Incubation held in Atlanta earlier that week. However, they made sure to take the opportunity to visit two of the largest businesses in the area, which the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce, Georgia organized for them.

SISP inside the Coca-Cola Headquarters

Do you or your group have an interest in visiting or getting in touch with local businesses in Georgia as well? Do not hesitate to contact us here at SACC-Georgia!

Last Sunday (May 6th), the Swedish American Chamber of Commerce joined forces with the Danish American Chamber of Commerce and set up a squad of tennis players that was set to go up against players representing the French American and Australian New Zealand American Chambers of Commerce. For the second consecutive year, we managed to take home the trophy! For more pictures from this glorious day, click on the image below.

Exports, Emerging Markets Drive Sweden’s Elekta
- article from GlobalAtlanta.com. To get to the article, click here

Cancer treatment has become more effective and affordable over the years, but the disease driving the rapid global growth of a Swedish medical technology company shows no signs of slowing down.

Elekta, which has its U.S. headquarters in Atlanta, has seen astronomical growth since introducing machines that treat cancer by radiation therapy, which Elekta President and CEO Tomas Puusepp said is less invasive than surgery and often more effective than drugs.

Of the $350 billion in spending on U.S. cancer care, radiation therapy only accounts for $6 billion, a number set to rise dramatically, Mr. Puusepp said at a Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce Georgia event held on April 13.

Elekta has already begun to ride this wave. Its share price on Stockholm’s OMX Nordic Exchange has jumped 171 percent over the last five years, ending Tuesday up 2 points to 354.8, a 0.57 percent change. Revenues stood at $1.1 billion in the fiscal year ending in April 2011. The company now employs 3,400 people across 40 entities around the world.

“We basically don’t have an expat. Our philosophy has always been ‘Please make sure you get the best people locally,’” Mr. Puusepp said.

Adapting to foreign business environments and keeping patient needs at the forefront have been keys to success, he said.

Elekta products are used to treat about 10 percent of the 12 million cancer cases worldwide. Though many more people are beating breast cancer, prostate cancer and other forms of the disease, global cancer diagnoses are set to rise by nearly 50 percent to 17 million by 2020, Mr. Puusepp said.

That sounds like defeat, but the rise is partially a function of longer life spans, bolstered by new technologies that catch and stop cancer before it kills. It’s also because people in the developing world are gaining access to diagnostic equipment, presenting a huge opportunity for medical-device companies.

Global From Birth

Elekta isn’t new to international growth. The company had to start exporting while still in its infancy, when it was cash-starved and only had about 20 employees in a home market of less than 10 million people.

“We didn’t have any muscle from a money point of view and we had to go global immediately,” Mr. Puusepp said.

Against all recommendations, the small company entered Japanthrough a partnership, carefully structuring the deal that enabled it to benefit from any long-term growth in the world’s second-largest health care market.

“We must have been smoking something when we started because everything was actually against success at the time. We were stupid enough not to listen,” Mr. Puusepp said.

Elekta is careful never to let distributors own the licensing rights or the regulatory approvals. Now more than 90 percent of sales are generated by Elekta’s organization. Less than 2 percent of its revenues come from Sweden.

Sales are split almost evenly among the major world regions, with software and services accounting for a small majority in North America, while hardware makes up more than 60 percent of sales in other regions.

With large, aging populations, emerging markets in Asia – especially China and India - have become major drivers of growth. Sales in the region were up 18 percent in 2010-11 as governments ramped up their health care capabilities. Growth is constrained less by a lack of sales and more by a lack of skilled technologists, a problem Elekta is trying to fix by establishing its own training centers.

Going Forward

In the near future, Elekta will continue investing about 8 percent of sales into research and development, which Mr. Puusepp said is key to maintaining its technological edge.

The company will use social media to drive public relations and hopes to better mine its huge database of cancer patients.

In short, the company would like to “own” the cancer care process, providing value for the patient at each step of the way, Mr. Puusepp said.

He knows personally how important that is for those facing the prospect of treatment: Both his father and sister died of cancer.

“I wanted to be part of the solution,” he said of why he joined the company.

Elekta is a major patron of the Swedish-American chamber in Atlanta. The company provides office space for interns and funding for activities. Chamber officials held the luncheon in part to show appreciation for Elekta’s contributions.

- Trevor Williams
Atlanta, 04.17.12

SACC-Georgia thanks Tomas Puusepp, President & CEO of Elekta, and all attendants for the interesting and successful Speaker Series Event

We would like to thank Tomas Puusepp along with everybody who attended the SACC-Georgia Speaker Series Event last Friday (13/04/2012) at the Commerce Club in Atlanta. Tomas Puusepp introduced and described Elekta’s line of business, as well as presenting some of the upcoming challenges and possibilities for the company and for the medical industry.

Tomas Puusepp’s and Elekta’s vital support to SACC-Georgia was acknowledged and thanked for by our Vice Chairman Benedikt Ibing and Chairman Gary Bruce.

Check out upcoming events for more opportunities to attend cultural and professional events by SACC-Georgia!

Successful night at the Networking and Movie Screening Event

We would like to thank everybody who attended the Networking and Movie Screening of “the Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest” yesterday night (27/03/2012) at the German Cultural Center in Atlanta for making it such a pleasant and successful event! More than 30 people showed up in total as Chairman Emeritus Tom Rosseland introduced the organization, its trainees as well as for the happenings of the evening.

Check out upcoming events for more opportunities to attend cultural and professional events by SACC-Georgia!

SACC-Georgia welcomes Johan Semberg

SACC-Georgia warmly welcomes Johan Semberg, the new Marketing Coordinator. Johan is 25 years old and originally from the town of Borås, located in the western part of Sweden. Johan recently finished his Master’s Degree in Political Science at Linnaeus University. The last semester of this program involved an opportunity to do an internship, which Johan chose to do in Brussels, Belgium at the Smaland Blekinge South Sweden EU Office. The office works mainly with lobbying and providing information to the regions and municipalities of south Sweden regarding the European Union, and vice versa.

Johan sees this traineeship as a wonderful opportunity to apply his knowledge in another environment and to learn from everything that the SACC organization and the United States have to offer.

“I am very happy and proud to have gotten the opportunity to gain practical and professional experience from such a dynamic and multi-facetted organization. I am certain that this employment will greatly develop my professional skills and at the same time constitute a great foundation for my future career. After my year at SACC-Georgia I am open for new challenges elsewhere, whether it will be based in Sweden or internationally.” – Johan Semberg

The Swedish Ambassador visits Atlanta

The Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce Georgia proudly presented the Swedish Ambassador to the United States, Mr. Jonas Hafstrom on January 25th – 26th. The Ambassador has served in Washington, DC since 2007 after three years as Ambassador of Sweden to Thailand.

The Ambassador arrived to Atlanta on Wednesday January 25th, together with Minister Counselor Magnus Ryden and the President of SACC-USA Therese Linde. During the day the party visited one of SACC-Georgia’s oldest and most loyal corporate members; Thomas Concrete. A stop was later made at the office of Atlanta’s Mayor Mr. Kasim Reed. The evening continued with a very special and exclusive event, some of SACC-Georgia’s corporate members got the opportunity to sit down with the Ambassador at a round table discussion. Later on the event was opened up for the entire SACC-Georgia network, to meet and greet with our Ambassador.

On Thursday the 26th the Ambassador’s party had an appointment to meet with Georgia Governor, Nathan Deal at the Capitol. The last stop before heading back to Washington, DC was made at SACC-Georgia’s absolute most important stakeholder, Elekta. As the most generous sponsor of our organization, Elekta was given the opportunity to host the Ambassador for the morning, greeting and addressing Elekta’s staff.

As the Ambassador party now has left Atlanta, we would like to extend our warmest thank you to Ambassador Mr. Jonas Hafstrom and his travel party; Mr. Magnus Ryden and Mrs. Therese Linde. We truly hope that more of these opportunities will emerge to keep giving our members extended value and reason to stay a member with our expansive network.

Until then, keep an eye out for upcoming events and keep in mind that being involved with our organization does give you exclusive opportunities like the one described above.

Read the article ” Swedish Ambassador: European Union is a success story” written for the GlobalAtlanta here.

SACC-Georgia Member Update

One of our own members of SACC-Georgia has been keeping very busy over the past couple of months—and making quite a few headlines in the process!

Brent Darnell has been awarded the honor of being named Top 25 Newsmaker of 2011 by Engineering News-Record for his Emotional Intelligence training approach to business success through client consulting, new editions of his popular primers, university teaching and multimedia tools that aim to turn so-called “tough guys” into exceptional leaders within the industry. Most noteworthy is the fact that within this group of 25 outstanding men and women being honored for their success, are past participants of Brent Darnell’s coaching and training program. Brent is truly a leading authority on Emotional Intelligence and the real-life proof has helped to earn him this very ‘newsworthy ‘title.

In addition to the Top 25 Newsmaker award, ENR also gave Brent’s best-selling book “The People-Profit Connection: How Emotional Intelligence can maximize your people skills and maximize your profits” a glowing review and high recommendation (Read it here). ENR says, “In an industry driven by human interactions and networking, The People-Profit Connection has never been more important.” Also, Matt Handal, author of the “Help Everybody Everyday” blog reviewed the People-Profit Connection with the same enthusiasm for its teachings (Read it here). Matt writes, “The demonstrations of his concepts are almost so unbelievable they seem like magic tricks.”

Brent Darnell has tapped into something special and his expertise on the application of Emotional Intelligence in the construction industry is now reaching more people than ever! Learn more about Brent Darnell by visiting his web site and about his book, The People-Profit Connection, by visiting Amazon.

Anders Borg, named European finance minister of the year by the Financial Times

In a tumultuous year for the continent’s economies, the Swedish finance minister won praise for his lucidity on economic policy, his contribution to continent-wide solutions and also for the strong performance of Sweden’s economy.

While Greece and Italy have only recently turned to “technocrats” to run their economies, Sweden has in effect, had an elected economic technocrat running its public finances for the past six years. Before becoming finance minister, Mr. Borg worked as a bank economist in the private sector and as an adviser to both Sweden’s central bank and the country’s Moderate party.

In an interview with the newspaper on Wednesday, Borg said that countries with strong public finances such as Sweden and Germany should be on stand-by to provide emergency fiscal stimulus if Europe falls into deep recession.

He said that if growth contracted and unemployment worsened then Sweden would “be willing to use stimulus measures because we could do that without running into major deficit problems”.

Source: Financial Times

SACC-Georgia’s 26th Annual Lucia Gala

Swede among the rednecks

I am writing this against the backdrop of cotton fields, peanut silos, and full knowledge that even in the city that I live in I am surrounded by rednecks. Of course rednecks are stereotypes just as they are real people. And is it not so also with Swedes?

What is it that makes me Swedish? I have wondered and continue to contemplate where I live in the south.

What is a redneck for that matter? A guy wearing a baseball cap, driving a pickup truck, and hanging a Confederate flag in front of his house or trailer? Perhaps.

What is a Swede? A sill-eating Social Democrat commuting to work by pedaling in trätofflor on a bicycle? Perhaps.

Read the full column by Ulf Kirchdorfer here.

Yesterday the 2011 Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index, was released. The annual report rates countries’ reputation, based on an average of ratings in governance, culture, people, immigration, investments, exports and tourism. The 2011 Nation Brand Index is based on the ratings of 50 nations by 20,337 people in 20 countries, and concludes that the U.S. remains number one, increasing its lead on Germany, compared to last year. Sweden, with a strong industry, cutting edge technology, breathtaking landscape and exciting culture is ranked on 10^th place and best of the Nordic countries, same place as last year’s ranking.

The Scandinavian has the privilege of holding both functional and decorative values. Most people think of most countries as being either predominantly useful or predominantly decorative. One of the reasons why Sweden’s image is so perfect is because it is unusually well balanced. Sweden manages to be both in almost equal proportions: competent and stylish, efficient and sexy, smart and attractive. Sweden’s so called brand value is the result of factors such as a good business environment, the welfare system, international diplomatic relation, long-lasting peace and generous attitude towards poorer countries.

“The strengths of America’s international standing continue to be innovation, opportunities and vibrancy,” says index founder Simon Anholt. Although increased since last year, the U.S. rating on domestic and foreign politics is still lowering the overall high score. The turbulent politic and economic climate in Europe during the last year also presumably contributed to the increasing U.S. lead.