Export-Import Bank chairman urges Iowa small businesses to use its services

Fred Hochberg, chairman and president of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, was in Des Moines this morning to pitch his agency's services as a playing-field leveler for small businesses seeking to broaden their export activity.
 
In a stop at Paper Systems Inc. in Des Moines, Hochberg toured the family-owned company's 50,000-square-foot warehouse, where it stores thousands of the specialized cardboard containers it manufactures and ships to customers globally. Ranging in size from 110 to 330 gallons, the company's drumlike plastic-lined "EZ-Bulk" containers resemble two-person hot tubs that carry products as diverse as Iowa wine and Argentine honey. The company's shipping containers are used in approximately 80 countries worldwide.
 
Paper Systems is among more than 50 Iowa companies that have used the Ex-Im Bank's services in the past five years; in that time, the agency has authorized financing to support approximately $180 million worth of exports by those Iowa companies. The agency said that 93 percent of the financing it provided in Iowa this past fiscal year directly benefited small businesses. (full article...)

BY JOE GARDYASZ, Business Record, February 18, 2015