Adam Torres and Eric Fang discuss FII PRIORITY MIAMI 2025.
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Show Notes:
Listen to FII PRIORITY MIAMI 2025 coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and Eric Fang, CEO at Skytower Investments Limited, explore manufacturing localization benefits in Saudi Arabia and FII PRIORITY MIAMI 2025.
About Eric Fang
Mr. Fang brings over 30 years of experience in technology, investment, business and corporate management across sectors including renewable energy, environmental services, healthcare, and wireless communications. He has served as a key consultant, advisor, and strategist for China market development, working with leading global technology companies such as Tektronix, Arris Group, Software AG, AT&T, GE Capital, and L-3 Communications.
About Skytower Investments Limited
The Skytower Investments (STI) is a renewable technology, green manufacturing, supply chain and green power production investment company. The senior management team comprise a unique mix of long experience in the fields of sustainable No Carbon Development (NCD) and deep understanding of the governmental policy drivers that support many national goals of Carbon Peak within a decade and Carbon Neutrality by 2050 or 2060.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today my guest is Eric Fang, and he is a CEO Over at Skytower Investments Limited.
Eric, welcome to the show. Thank you Adam. Alright, Eric. So this has been one of my favorite interview series that I’ve done in a long time. So for everybody that’s tuning in, this is part of our FII priority interview series that , we’ve been, we went out to Miami for the our FII priority, and 2025.
And it was just such a great time and we got to meet a lot, a lot of. The other leaders , that attended, and we’ve been bringing many of them on our show. Eric is one of those. So first thing Eric, I wanna get into is FII priority, like talk, talk to me about your experience. I don’t think we quite got to cross paths, but I’m not gonna lie, that was a busy, busy couple of days.
So, how was your experience. That was a great experience. Adam, so you know, if you if you notice that the Sky Tower investments, we form our investment company in Saudi Arabia two years ago, I. We have been engaged with every ministry level as that you can imagine possible. And one of the key elements of our engagement was with PIF, which is the Sovereign Fund.
And you all know this FII priority, or FII conference was basically established by p. And we knew all the senior management of P and we knew all the senior management of FII, Institute, Institute you know, Richard Atia is a friends of ours and we had been very, very admire what his success over the past 10 years on this FII initiative.
Hmm. Yeah, I’m just quite impressed I’m not gonna say I was late to the party, but this is my first year coming. I’ve covered big conferences, like milking Global conference and a bunch of others for a long time. And I just finally, I had a really good buddy of mine out there, his name’s Christopher Kind.
He is like, Adam, you gotta come out here. You gotta, like, this is, you gotta be part of this. And I’m like, okay, well I trust you. So if you say I need to be there, I need to be there. But it, Completely exceeded all of my expectations, honestly. I was like, wait a minute. How many years has this been going on?
Why am I just, I like to, I mean, I’m not gonna say I’m always in the know, but I’m like, man, I’m like, you’re three in. I’m like, how come nobody else tell me what’s going on? A couple people were like, I did tell you Adam, you just weren’t listening. I’m like, well, you should have told me more, more strongly.
I you know, Adam, it was amazing. You know, so when you looking at the FII, which is Saudi Arabia initiated the conference many, many years ago. This is on, is this year in 2025 will be the ninth. Right? I hope I’ll see you in October. There. We will be there. In on the ninth you know, over nine years, I didn’t even know this is existing.
Okay. Until two years ago. We were like, wow, we need to get in there. But the moment you get in there, the atmosphere, the, you know, the energy that just. Fuck you in there. You can never get up. Yeah. I have never, you know, I’m, I’m in the US for 40 years. I know all the conferences. We go to many, many conferences.
Yeah. But the, the concentration of subject and the elite mm-hmm. That they join this conference. It’s a world class. I mean, there’s nothing you can go through that, you know, it is just incredible. Yeah, I agree with that., I wanna switch it up a bit here, Eric. Let, let’s get a little bit into what you’re doing over at Sky Towers Investments Limited.
So first off, maybe tell us a little bit more about the company. I. Okay, so this is very, very interesting. So back in two years ago, right? 2023. Mm-hmm. We were being introduced through our partner in Saudi Arabia. None of us. have never been there. We really didn’t know since Pandemic, we really didn’t know what’s going on there, you know, so our partner today in the Sky Tower Investments, which is Abdullah Mahi, and the call says, you know, you guys, you need to come over.
We’re like, what’s going on? This is, there’s a huge change in Saudi Arabia. Industrialization is going on. You’ve gotta come and see this. This is like 40 years ago what China has been doing. I was like, what? You know, because, you know, we are in Houston, right? So in Houston you see many over the 40 years, you see many families go to Saudi Arabia or Middle East.
Mm-hmm. They are all oil related companies. Right. You shell bp, anybody else and the ACO of the world, you know, you know, you see, we have the neighborhood. Many, many people that take the whole family go to Saudi Arabia for oil exploration, production, whatever it is. We only narrow mindedly thought, oh, Saudi Arabia, it’s a production of oil.
That’s it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No one in the US would understand the dynamic today presented to us in front of us from Saudi Arabia. That’s the excitement that we, we, so we were here two years ago. We immediately formed our Sky Tower investments from us, from Houston, Texas company. We formed Joy Venture there.
Within two weeks, the government approved our application. It was a wow green track. It was a green track. You know, normally you go to Saudi Arabia, you try to form investment company. The minimum would be minimum about 12 months. Okay. so we went in two weeks ministry give us GreenLights like you ever believe.
One of the key elements here is that we actually was prepared to go. That is, you know, our chairman Neil Bush was was my chair and we, knew the Saudi Arabia to the, to United States, the embassy there. And we also knew the Ambassador Princess Rema. So before we actually went to Saudi Arabia, we went to Washington DC to the office of the Embassy.
We met with Princess Rema, the ambassador. We actually asked for advice. This is probably the most important step. We never did. Okay. We ever did. Mm-hmm. And we got the green light. We got the support like you ever believe. We thank, we thank Princess Rima for the whole today as we evolve after two years of our work there, and it is every step of the way we report it to the master what we did.
Right. So. Mm-hmm. With that kind of a structure, not many people can hide that structure, but with that kind of a structure, we try to really focus to see if we can align ourself to support the vision 2030, and we call it the localization. Mm-hmm. Talk a little bit more about prioritizing your manufacturing investments under the vision 2030.
Like, tell us a little bit more about, about how you see that playing out or how that works in. So if you’re looking in the Saudi Arabia vision 2030, which in the FII priority, you know, you basically, that’s a major theme, which is we call the localization manufacturing, manufacturing localization. Now, if you take a site view, looking at what 40 years, what China did in 40 years ago and until today, what Saudi Arabia are trying to do, they are very similar.
a country with one policy wants to do something right to its people. Then you look into how you can bring up the level of the living standards. Without industrialization, you cannot bring the level mm-hmm. Level of the living standards. So therefore, if you just mimic what China did over 40 years with the US support and help, you know, I was the guy.
Our chairman, Neil, together, you know, we on a separate path, we helped China from US 40 years ago. Following the opening relationship. we brought everybody to China because we are the frontrunner. Mm-hmm. We nobody then 40 years ago, many of the US companies do not understand China. So they need the team in front of them to look at what can be done.
The industrialization, the localization was the very, in the very beginning of the Chinese development. So now if you shift that, look back to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, over about its industrialization early on into the oil, into the, we call it the petrochemical, which was established by. Us. Right? If you look in the Saudi Aramco establishment, Saudi’s establishment today, you realize, Adam, you know, every minister, every director, every corporate structure or ministry structure, people, they are proud mm-hmm.
To be what associate their professional experience from Aramco or ic, because those are the only two large employer. In Saudi Arabia to train generation by generation. So 40 years, four decades of training. So today, if you see wow, from top to bottom right, everybody’s coming out of those two companies. So when you go to meet people there, they are very proud of their US education.
Of course they have a Saudi Arabia’s own university, which, you know the United States help a lot. And then they, they are very proud to tell you this. Look, I speak perfect English. I am US trained. I like to work with us. I like to work with the mentality. That’s how a industrialization could happen. Now if you switch that subject to 40 years ago how China did, it’s exactly the model.
What we try to do is when we help China 40 years ago now, we spearheaded it to looking at, because this unprecedented vision 2030 by MBS, we wanted to do some supportive work, right? Mm-hmm. You know, along the supportive work, you make money, you make a network, you make. Friendship. You, you immerse yourself understanding culture.
The, the difficulty is for people to immerse yourself in Saudi Arabia to understand the culture so that you can help to try that industrialization. So we love that vision. 2030 is because it’s fundamentally needed in order for industrialization going, you must have a basic manufacturer. We call it fundamental manufacturing.
Right? Mm-hmm. With that, then you need to establish localization, but it is hard to reach, to build a localization without the foundation of, we call it manufacturing game. Right? Once you have the game mm-hmm. You can then bring the supply chain into that game so that then you have a full your dream.
Or fulfill your dream of industrialization. So localization of local manufacturing is a foundation for Saudi Arabia. Mm-hmm. Wow. That’s, interesting. So seeing and as, and as you’re talking, I’m thinking about like, there’s just, you think about the amount of opportunity that’s gonna be coming out there, especially under Vision 2030.
And what’s happening is I’ve kind of gone through, like further and further in this in this series of interviews and hearing from actually different, many different industries within there. there’s just been this central theme of opportunity. Like there’s opportunities for people that wanna do business for, for the people that wanna create, create value, right?
Like real value. There’s opportunity. Correct. You know, if you are looking today Saudi Arabia, when you go in there in R in everywhere, we have been traveling in the last two weeks and two years everywhere in Saudi Arabia. Right. We establish our base. Mm-hmm. We establish our agreements with the local royal commissions and local cities for a purpose of helping them to industrialize Nice their city.
So manufacturer localization becomes the cornerstone or the foundation for society to grow up to a different level, right? Mm-hmm. You don’t just simply do a trade, you actually produce something not as important. Right. Yeah. So when you are looking at the industrialization, or we call it localization, how can you bring your next generation of employees, which is graduate from universities, colleges, and vocational schools?
You give them the opportunity to work. That is what Saudi Arabia is driving. So today you go to Saudi Arabia, it’s like. A, a place under construction everywhere. Yeah. Mm-hmm. You see the cranes, you see all the machines. Even, it’s like a mind boggling. So that reminds me 90, 90, when I walk first, walk back to China, I was born in the fifties.
I came out of 80 81 to us. Mm-hmm. Extend my study and finish my study. 10 years afterwards, I never go back to China. So in 1990, I went back to China. My mind was blowing away by. By sheer fact that you saw that. So that image is replicated in Saudi Arabia.
Wow. So industrialization will help young generation, Adam. So now people, you know, in Saudi Arabia we have almost 70% less. It’s 40 years or less, 65% or 30 years and less. So they are very young. Mm-hmm. You create the, government, create the opportunity for them to get hands on work. It is very important.
We are just part of the, the movement, helping them to establish the work opportunity. And while you getting people employed, you get the country going different level.
Well, Eric, this has been, first off, I learned a lot. I’m hoping my audience learned a lot as well. This has been great. I appreciate you coming on the show today. Before I, before I let you go, if somebody wants to learn more about Sky Cower Investments Limited or Connect, how do they do that? They can do it.
Go to our website called www Sky Tower.
They can email they call, you know, we have a general email. You can email it to info and sky tower saudi.com and they can always reach us, right? We have a team to handle all the in inquiries. Hmm, fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the link in the show notes so you can just click on the link and head right on over and check out the website.
And speaking to the audience. If this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Eric, thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you, Adam.
Let’s chat.