Express Electronics out of China scouting Waterloo Region

For the past seven months, Gill Gao made the rounds of auto parts makers looking for buyers of printed circuit boards.

Gao came to Waterloo Region to set up an international sales office for Express Electronics Ltd., a factory in Qingyuan, China that is owned by KingBoard — the world’s biggest maker of printed circuit boards.

Trade tensions and tariffs among Canada, the U.S. and China have made his job challenging, but he is optimistic about making connections and sales in three sectors — automotive, green-energy hardware and robotics.

The custom-made boards are the electronic brains found in just about everything, from cars and planes to trains and laptops. Most printed circuit boards are made in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.

But China alone makes