Today was our first day of company visits. We first met with Medochemie: a pharmaceutical company, that produces versions of pharmaceuticals that are already in existence. Their headquarters are located in Limassol, which was around an hour and a half bus ride away. The company visit began with a presentation from three representatives of the company. From there, we had an hour discussion session. Medochemie has 630 product combinations, and serves 300 million customers with offices in 20 countries. Two topics that their presentation focused on were Quality Assurance– making sure all aspects of the production and products are ok before being released to the market– and Good Manufacturing Practice– which are regulations to ensure the quality of products. Some interesting things that I noted from their presentation were how they are affected by the situation in Ukraine, and how regulations in Europe differ from regulations in the United States. I was surprised to hear that the pharmaceuticals from this company are not FDA approved, so they are not sold in the US.

After this discussion, we toured the storage facility in the building. This was a very large room with storage containers up to the ceiling, and movable rows. The rows move very slowly, but their ability to move increases the possible capacity of the facilities. After this, we went to the University of Nicosia to have lunch in their market.

In the afternoon, we had a meeting with two representatives from Wargaming in the Red auditorium in UNIC. Wargaming is a game creation company, with its main products being the games World of Tanks, World of Warships, and World of Warplanes. Their headquarters are located in Cyprus for multiple reasons: it is the center of all of their offices, the tax system is good, it is a part of the European Union, it is a safe country, and as they added at the end, it has nice weather. The company’s presentation walked us through the process of a game going from an idea to a product. Stages in between include the proposal stage, the prototype stage, feature creeps, alpha testing, and then beta testing. Along these stages, the product must pass green lights to move on.

It was a great learning experience to meet and interact with these companies, to learn more about their places in supply chains and their decision making processes, and to see first hand how the companies go about the creation of their products and problem solving.