China trade helps toolmaker prosper
Menands -- Firm secures $5.1M deal to upgrade railroad facility in Inner Mongolia
By KENNETH AARON, Business writer
First published: Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Don't tell John O. Naumann a woe-is-us story about the nation's trade gap with China, which grew to $105 billion last year.
His company, Simmons Machine Tool Corp., just whittled it by $5.165 million.
The Menands-based maker of rail car maintenance tools inked the contract, its largest in six years, with China North Industries Corp. on Oct. 29.
"You've got this attitude going around that we're a great incubator of ideas," said Naumann, snorting at the notion that manufacturing in this country is dead.
Simmons, which has worked with China in the past, won a contract to outfit a new rail yard in Baotou -- a city of 1.3 million people in Inner Mongolia -- with eight tools, as well as training that will be done in Menands.
"Doing business in China, every order has a liaison trip," Naumann said Monday. "You know why? They all want to come to the U.S."
While many businesses look upon China as a job-eating machine, Gerald Shaye, director of International Trade Development for Empire State Development Corp., the state's economic development arm, is convinced that New York companies can crack China.
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