NORDJYSKE Media – 20th August 2009

In Greenland tasks need joint hands, Arctic Group considers. Network is the key word when 150 businessmen from North Jutland and Greenland meet at a seminar today about future possibilities for cooperation between Greenland and North Jutland. And network is also the model for solution which can pave the way to get a share of the orders which follow in the wake of the mining activities in the years ahead.

 - Even if companies in North Jutland today stand for 65 percent of the supplies to the society in Greenland – and thereby are of great importance to both Greenland and North Jutland – then of course there will be projects in future development which each of us will have difficulty in taking on and handling separately. Therefore establishing networks is quite obvious in this connection, says Mr Peter Freiesleben, managing director of Arctic Group, which accounts for a very large business in Greenland.

- We ourselves deliver everything from rubber boots to contractor’s machines, but our most important expertise might well be that frequently we are used to operating in very strenuous conditions encountered in Greenland and the Arctic regions, emphasizes Mr Peter Freiesleben, who has just shipped food supplies to a scientific expedition in Citronfjorden in North East Greenland. 

Mr Gunnar Laursen, manager of XL-BYG Arctic Import, which is the group’s company for building materials, also points to the logistics as probably the crucial element that Arctic Import can contribute with.

- We have 30 years’ experience in making our way in Greenland in even the most horrid conditions of nature, and at the same time we have contact to a large number of partners in Greenland with whom we quite naturally can cooperate with in this connection, says Mr Gunnar Laursen.

At the same time he thinks that many of the large American/Canadian mining companies, which have got licences to run extractive activities in the underground in Greenland, first of all will be interested in being content with getting as few sub-suppliers as possible.

- Consequently, it will be a great advantage for us to offer many suppliers for deliveries through a network; Mr Gunnar Laursen adds seeing contractor’s companies as obvious centres of rotation for that type of cooperation.

Mining a New World

Arctic Group themselves have made a number of preparations in order to get in touch with the mining companies, who undeniably are rather unfamiliar to businesses in North Jutland, among other things by participating in a large mining exhibition in March in Toronto, Canada. 

- The organisation behind the seminar, Arctic Business Network, is not merely a coffee club. In our own organisation we have appointed people especially to get acquainted with the tasks which wait ahead and which partners would be obvious to join hands with in this connection, says Mr Gunnar Laursen.

He stresses that it is important to get Greenlandic companies involved.

- Many Greenlandic firms have the special competences which are required in this connection. And as a player in the society in Greenland we very much want to help securing partners in Greenland a share in all of this development in the area of raw materials. Quite a lot of money is at stake in this field, and it will be rather annoying if largely foreign companies run off with the tasks, says Mr Gunnar Laursen.

In the same breath he maintains that one has to be aware that the mining sector will be a case which has to be worked at long-term.

- We must build on permanent connections and in that way also work actively at providing the Greenlandic society with some of the competences development requires, considers Mr Gunnar Laursen.