Wrapping up the year on a positive note, GIC finally welcomed the first physical delegation to Hong Kong since 2019 – the International Startup Campus Hong Kong Startup Class 2022. ISC is a cooperation between the German Universities Halle-Jena-Leipzig to support start-ups on their international growth journey. The project is supported by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.

Five start-ups took part in the week-long delegation trip: Human motion tracking specialist SAIGE Analytics; mobile proxy solution provider 3G Proxy; UAV infrastructure developer EVA; vertical farming platform Greenhub; and Web3 voice and music app Klangchat. GIC Hong Kong supported the group throughout an intensive week of workshops, meetings, and site visits by providing a convenient workspace as well as organisational support.

On 8 December, we hosted our annual German Chamber Christmas Party at the Hong Kong Country Club. Together with our members, partners, and friends of the Hong Kong-German business community we celebrated the festive season and ended the year in style. Thanks to our generous sponsors, without whom this wonderful evening would not have been possible. Check our website for a selection of our favourite moments!

On 7 December, New Life Plastics Limited celebrated the grand opening of their new plastic recycling facility in Tuen Mun. NLP is a joint venture of GCC member ALBA Group Asia, Baguio Green Group Limited, and Swire Coca-Cola, with the aim to create a plastic bottle circular economy in Hong Kong. The new facility consists of two production lines for food-grade ready PET flakes and high-quality HDPE flakes.

Business confidence of German companies in China reached a historic low in 2022, according to the AHK Greater China Business Confidence Survey 2022/23. While China’s recent pivot away from the zero-Covid policy has been a much-welcomed development that will help restore business confidence in the medium to long term, the disruption of business operations throughout the year has left deep tracks.

In late November, the Census and Statistics Department released the 2022 Annual Survey of Companies in Hong Kong with Parent Companies Located outside Hong Kong, which provides the latest statistical overview of foreign business in Hong Kong. In terms of countries of origin, Germany ranked sixth overall and second among European countries with 424 companies, equivalent to 4.7% of the total number (8,978).

GTAI’s Wirtschaftsdaten kompakt deliver a bi-annual overview of statistics and economic indicators on Hong Kong, including demographic developments, economic and trade performance, merchandise imports and exports, and foreign trade with the EU and Germany in particular. The latest edition as of December 2022 is now available for download (German language).

BlackHills Consultancy is a boutique commercial real estate agency and consultancy firm founded in 2016, with offices in Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

Find all 2022-23 representative changes at a glance here.

Hong Kong was home to a total of 3,985 start-ups in 2022, according to the latest survey report by Invest Hong Kong. This marked a year-on-year increase by 6% and a 52% increase since 2018. The number of employees working in start-ups has grown at a similar rate (+56%) over the same period and currently stands at just under 15,000.

While the majority of start-ups was founded by Hong Kong locals or returnees, every fourth start-up founder was non-local with the largest nationality groups being Mainland China (21.2%), the United States (16.3%), and the United Kingdom (13.1%). Germany (2.6%) ranked in tenth place overall. FinTech (513 start-ups) and E-Commerce/LogTech (512) were by far the largest industry clusters, followed by ICT (369), education/learning (319), and professional services (309).

In addition to its broad and diverse field of innovative enterprises, Hong Kong reportedly also has the highest number of unicorn start-ups – private companies with a market valuation of at least US$1bn – relative to its population size. The list includes prominent names such as on-demand delivery platform Lalamove with an estimated valuation of US$10bn (making it Hong Kong’s only “decacorn”), as well as digital assets service provider Amber Group, online consumer lending platform WeLab, as well as game development and blockchain company Animoca Brands.