translate into Chinese: Ladies and gentlemen,
My name is <PRESIDIO_ANONYMIZED_PERSON>. I’m Vice President of the Coatings Division at Vincentz Network. It is a great pleasure and even greater honor for me to welcome you today to the opening of this important event. I would have loved to speak to you in person, but unfortunately it was not possible for me to travel to Shanghai, which is a real pity. I’d like to thank to the CNCIA for giving me the opportunity and confidence to address you here. We all have been through very challenging times, unable to interact with each other in the usual way for a long time. A lot of things were possible with the help of digital tools, but especially in our industry, the coatings industry, the personal conversation with our customers and our suppliers is very valuable. In my opinion, the face-to-face conversation is essential to build trust and friendship. Both play a very important role in sustainable business relationships. Furthermore, our industry is mostly about products that require technical explanation. Many things also need to be seen and tested with our own eyes. Finally, you can come together again here at this important show to get comprehensive information, make new contacts or even refresh old contacts. This show will be an important building block for the Chinese coatings industry to regain its strength after the pandemic. Of course, there are more challenges for our industry to come, but this show is a very good start to face upcoming challenges. Development in the coatings industry never stands still, and you all have to respond daily to customer demands, changing raw material situations and changing regulatory frameworks. The global coatings industry plays an important role in meeting challenges in the entire world. As one of the largest economies in the world, China and therefore the Chinese coatings industry have great responsibility. I am not too worried about whether we will be able to meet the challenges because I know that the coatings industry per se always finds suitable solutions. As an example, I would like to mention the development of water-based coatings. When I joined Vincentz Network in 2007 and became part of the global coatings industry, so-called water-based coatings were norm, but within the industry, they were still relatively exotic and not widely used. At that time, experts agreed that waterborne coatings would probably never be used in heavy corrosion protection for example, because the performance gap compared to solvent-based coatings seemed far too big to ever be closed. And where are we today? Water-based coatings are used in almost all application areas, even corrosion protection. Or think of polyurethane systems. We reported in the European Coatings Journal about ten years ago on research into isocyanate-free polyurethane systems. Afterwards, I received calls asking why we have what we report and something like that, because they forethought it impossible that they could ever work and so I didn’t see relevance to our industry to the callers. And today, not only are there many research projects around the world on this topic, but there are now quite a few products on the market. These are only two of many stories I could tell about challenges that have been mastered by the coatings industry. Trade fairs like this one show the fact that new innovations are always being created and products are brought to the market for people that improve their lives because they are more environmentally friendly or they extend the lifetime of everyday objects or because they simply make our surroundings more beautiful. I wish you all a very successful fair. Thank you very much.