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By David Wu

This Tuesday the 27th of September 2011 The Weekly COIC Expat Dinner is at Shangri-La Hotel (Buffet Area), The dinner it is open for all Expats, Chinese friends, and all COIC Members Starting from 07.00 PM, 88 Yuyuan Road, Jiangdong District, Ningbo,Buffet Area: we have a special place reserved for COIC Weekly Expat DinnerSpecial price including soft drinks

and beers. 160 RMB / Person

NingboExpat Kaki Happy Hour................ better than ever

It was a tradition for years and now it is back in town. Chinese friends and foreigners meet for an informal get together. The Singapore Kaki Club in cooperation with NingboLife/NingboExpat are inviting to the Happy Hour at the 3rd floor of the Zorbas Greek restaurant in main street of Lao Waitan. (Old place of Lotus Club)

Meet new and old friends, have a chat and a drink at highly discounted rates.

And in the happy hour Wednesday 18.30 - 20.30 you get 2 for one.

Meet you and have some fun

For celebrating the opening ceremony of Ningbo tourism festival 2011, Ningbo Tourism Bureau and Reindeer station will organize one day free trip to Wetland Park of Hangzhou Bay& Hai Tian Yi Zhou on Sep 27^th. The detials are below.

Could you help us to put a free trip on your newsletter to share with your friends. The attachment is the detail. Please kindly find it. Thanks very much!

on NingboLife . com youcan download the PDF file with all details

A Sun Yat-sen Uniform of 4 Meters Long

A Sun Yat-sen Uniform of 4 Meters Long

To commemorate the centennial anniversary of the 1911 Revolution, the students with the Zhejiang Textiles and Garments College tailored a Sun Yat-sen uniform of 4 meters long.

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Art show put on

An art show of teachers and students was put on at the Museum of Art of Ningbo on September 13. Some 600 pieces of artworks created by teachers and students of Ningbo were on display.

Luncheon of 100 tables offered to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival

A luncheon of 120 tables was offered in Daxu Town of Xiangshang to celebrate the Mid-autumn Festival September 12.

Li Yuan' Landscape Photography Exhibition Opened

LED Wall Lamp of UTEC Electric Awarded in UK

News came a few days ago that the 270-butterfly-shaped wall lamp, independently developed by Ningbo UTEC Electric Appliances Company won the 2011 UK Lamp Design Award, which made a special report by BBC. “As the product was jointly developed by our design department and the French R&D center, it is a combination of both Chinese and Western styles, which is the key to the winning of the award”, said Zhu Yuehua, chairman of UTEC.
UTEC is a company engaged in production of outdoor lights, with the products going abroad 100%. In recent years, in developing new products, it has been confronted with a bottleneck: it finds it difficult to keep pace with leading companies of lights overseas. To go on imitating foreign products or develop their own products by hiring foreign talents? UTEC chose the latter.
In 2009, UTEC worked with the famous French design company-Design Pool to establish the French research and development center. “We pay the foreign talents flexibly such as awarding them according to the sale volume”, said Zhu Yuehua. Now the center has more than 30 researchers who keep developing a new product every quarter to cater to local consumers. Soon after that, UTEC spread the model to Sweden, Israel and other countries.
More than hiring foreign design talents, UTEC has also employed foreign sale talents who have expanded the markets from Middle East and South Asia to Europe and raised its yearly export volume from more than 1million dollars to nearly 10million dollars. UTEC has also set up offices abroad and holding companies in Russia, Italy and Germany, which have all achieved good economic benefits.
The foreign design and sales speed up UTEC’s reaching to the ends of the smile curve. In recent three years, the low-carbon and energy-efficient products have been replacing the traditional products at a rate of 15%. Now, more than 60% of its products are highly technical LED and solar lamps, the main profit source of the company. In the first half of this year, UTEC has successfully applied for more than 20 domestic and 22 foreign design patents.
During the first half year UTEC’s sale has achieved 181million Yuan with a year-on-year growth of 15%. The export price is more than twice that of the domestic counterparts.  The UME outdoor lamp has made way to major supermarkets in EU and the independent brands sold in Germany this year has exceeded 30million, with the profit rate more than 30%. 
“Enterprises should upgrade actively and update traditional products gradually rather than wait for the next crisis”, said Zhu. “UTEC will switch from OEM and ODM to OBM, trying to achieve a yearly sale volume of 1billion Yuan at the end of the twelfth five year plan period and become a world famous lighting supplier.”