Vermont’s international trade director traveled to Turkey the week of Thanksgiving to court foreign business and investors.
On the heels of a medical industry trade show in Dusseldorf, Germany, Brent Raymond proceeded to Ankara for a dual mission: to encourage a Turkish firm to establish its business footprint in Vermont, and to meet with potential investors in the federal EB-5 Immigrant Investor program.
Raymond heads up the Agency of Commerce & Community Development’s international trade office and the state’s EB-5 regional center. The EB-5 program provide a conditional green card to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in a qualified American firm. Vermont is the only state to fully own and operate a regional center to administer the EB-5 program.
He said he’d be speaking to a Turkish-American organization about EB-5 investment opportunities. He declined to provide details on the business he was courting.
“All I can say now is they’re a green manufacturing company,” Raymond said, “with a new technology that would take waste stream out of our landfills that previously there’s no solution for.”
