One Australian company benefiting from China’s sporting boom is Anti Wave International, a specialist manufacturer of high grade swimming pool equipment. Sophie Loras reports. 

Based out of Ipswitch, Queensland, Anti Wave International manufactures top performance competition aquatic sports and swimming pool equipment – from pool deck fittings, starting blocks, lane ropes, water polo goals and balls to horizontal 4-tonne fibreglass bulkheads and vertical movable pool floors that can change the dimensions of swimming and diving pools.  

In 2002, in the wake of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, Anti Wave was approached by the Chinese government to set up a manufacturing plant in China. The factory in Yangzhou, located in Jiangsu province between Shanghai and Nanjing, has in just six years grown to employ more than 60 local staff.  

In 2005 Anti Wave won the tender to provide deck fittings, rails, lane ropes and gratings for the iconic Water Cube at last year’s Beijing Olympic Games. The company was also commissioned to manufacture the Water Cube’s state-of-the-art Omega starting blocks. Since then Anti Wave has secured several other big deals both in China and overseas for the manufacture of its specialist equipment.  

Experts from Anti Wave’s Ipswitch factory in Queensland have been working with the company’s Chinese staff in Yangzhou for the past five years to provide training in the specialist manufacturing of its fibreglass starting blocks and other equipment.  

The Chinese factory is now producing equipment for projects in Europe, the US, the Middle East as well as domestic projects in China, including in Chengdu, Tianjin, Macau, Hong Kong and Guangzhou which will host the 2010 Asian Games. There has also been increased interest from other countries in the region including Mongolia and Singapore. 

Most recently the Yangzhou factory began manufacturing its first container of Omega starting blocks for dispatch to Swatch in Switzerland.  

"Sport is just booming now in China," says Anti Wave International director Anti Kajlich.  

"The Olympics brought those smaller cities and countries in the region into the sporting arena. They are all now building national stadiums and swimming pools." 

Kajlich, himself a former Olympian having represented the former Czechoslovakia in water polo, puts the success of his Chinese venture down to the confidence he has in his young Chinese employees and his insistence on retaining complete ownership of the business.  

Chinese staff are selected straight out of university and trained up specifically for the job. Currently all Kajlich’s Chinese management staff are under the age of 30. 

"This is the new generation of Chinese – hard working, well educated and I have full confidence in what they do," says Kajlich. "And that’s why I’ve been able to survive in China for as long as I have."