It all seems so deceptively simple - like a concert maestro who draws forth a remarkable symphony of sound with the gentle lift of a baton.  Seated in the quiet of his noticeably uncluttered office on 17 Hullfish Street, Mr. Christian Torske picks up the phone.  

He calls a few old friends in China.  He talks to a few new ones in the Midwest, and in California.  Then a quick e-mail explains the familiar details to his trusted freight handler, and with that, the composition begins to come together.  Mr. Torskes is the orchestration of hundreds of people and thousands of tons of materials that will span the globe to their precise destination, without his ever laying eyes on them. 

Somewhere in a Chinese chemical factory, the chief engineer gets the order and switches the line to process Vitamin C.  Workers prepare and bag the powder into one-kilo bags which run about $11.50 each in the open market.  At the loading dock, other workers fill crates and heft them into waiting 18-ton container trucks.   When the prescribed ten containers carrying this shipments 180 tons of Vitamin C packets are loaded up, the trucks wheel them over Chinese roadways to the port of Shanghai where tall cranes load them onto waiting freighters.

Hopefully, no governmental turmoil or holdups take place at Shanghais docks.  But if problems arise, Mr. Torskes agent stands on hand to cover it.  Once hoisted aboard, the 20-by-eight-foot containers of  Vitamin C can expect a surprisingly smooth ride across the Pacific.  Even though they may be stacked six high, Torske claims that less than one percent of the time does a container get washed over or experience major water damage.

As the cargo enters the U.S. Port of New York, the designated freight handler, an individual of long experience, will swiftly ease the loads from dockside inspection to roadway - a process achieved today in high tech and completely remotely.  Out on the interstates, the U.S. drivers know their routes and delivery times exactly.  They log in and are constantly tracked by their central office which informs Torske in case of some infrequent irregularity. 

Just in time, the Vitamin C arrives at megavitamin company GNC plant where it is processed into human-size doses.  Other trucks, carrying vitamins A, E, or E3 will deliver to Tyson or one of the nations five largest meat producers who will blend it into their meticulously compounded feed mix for chickens, cattle, or hogs.     A call then goes out to Torskes Hullfish office, thanking him for smooth delivery, and placing another order.

Behind the scenes.  The company through whom all these tons of chemicals so seamlessly flow is DVA America, the newest division of commercial trading giant DVA International GMBH.  Beginning 40 years ago in Torskes hometown of Hamburg, Germany, DVA now boasts 15 global offices from Paraguay to the Ukraine linking suppliers and business customers in 60 countries. Revenues are reported well into the 500 million Euro range.  Their motto of Just What You Need includes a specialties menu ranging from crop protection, pharmaceuticals, food and feed additives, to steel and plastics.  Yet despite the enormity of their reach, DVA likes to run lean.

At this point, DVA America is Mr. Christian Torske; president and sole staff member.  It remains, in fact, somewhat vague as to how much DVAs entrance into Princeton this past August, was an attempt to stake out an American presence and how much merely to recruit Torskes impressive talents.  Either way, for the three short months DVA America has been up and running, the trades have been streaming in, and the markets, already expanding.   

We are looking to hire a few other people, says Torske, Particularly some sales professionals.  He uses the term professionals, as a warning to applicants.    Individuals who join this elite force will be comfortably and capably negotiating with senior executives from the likes of $26.6 billion meat producer Tyson Foods, Inc., and $1.6 billion vitamin magnate GNC Corporation.  Here is no league for sales reps.

But such well appointed offices are very much the commercial milieu for Torske.  Thirty-year master of his distribution trade, it all began with a wanderlust.  Torskes family for generations tended their farm along the German/Polish border area, and even when his parents moved to Hamburg, their jobs kept them fairly homebound.  But I always loved to travel, he recalls.  So as I began to reach the age of choices, I realized I needed a career that would take me to foreign places.  

Torske made his choice by entering the German Institute of Foreign Trade in Hamburg, where three days a week were spent on academics, and the remainder of the week out in the field, as an intern.  The trading and distribution company of Helm, Inc., with whom he served his apprenticeship, was to nurture his expertise for over three decades.  

After honing his craft ten years at the Hamburg headquarters, making the right friends, learning the logistics, the young Mr. Torske was sent to head Helm New York, Inc. in Piscataway.  Here, as president, he rolled out a steady, methodical continuum of trades, gained trust, and with a markedly small staff, brought in annual revenues of over $111 million.   From 30 nations, Helm delivered to an ever-expanding list of clients.   Neomycin sulfate and other veterinary raw materials, folic acid and lysine for animal feed, calcium ascorbate and vitamin B12 for human pharmaceuticals, and even aroma chemicals - Torske, visited, made the contacts and gained the contracts with producers all around the globe.

This is exactly the walking worldwide Rolodex of personal partners and friends that DVA sought when they approached Chris Torske.  It is a small world, he says.  The owners and staff and I have known each other for a long while.  For me, the move has been very natural.  For DVA, opening the Hullfish Street office holds the potential of not only gaining an accomplished master, but a new range of clients as well.  Torske admits that while DVAs owners have always had a particular affinity for the Nassau Inn, the fact that the firm now has a presence in Americas pharmaceutical capital indeed affected the location decision.

So once again, Torske begins working a new web.  He makes now typically five strategic visits across the globe each month.  About 80 percent of his raw chemical suppliers lie in China.  India provides much of the remainder.  Mexico and Brazil handle other sources.  These lands are not famed for easy ground transport or sea cargo shipping.  Shortages in supply can bring sudden breaks in the chain, interrupting long term orders for companies, like meat producers, who cannot wait.  Well, of course, you always plan backups for such situations, says Torske calmly, but during the Olympics, getting things across and out of China was fraught with delays. 

Transfer courses dont necessarily run smooth upon reaching the high tech, highly mechanized ports in San Francisco or New York.  Homeland Security has exponentially increased inspections and shipping regulations.  Long is the list of chemicals which are deemed hazardous and now require costly tracking monitors installed in all transport vehicles.  

To deal with the just-in-time production schedules of many clients, Torske must warehouse certain chemicals nearby in the U.S.  Here it gets tricky.  Factoring in the costs of production of unpurchased product, warehouse storage, shelf life, current market trends; how much of each chemical do you put where?  (Your estimation may make the difference between red ink or black.)

For vitamin C, its a matter of storing tons that have come by sea.  For more rarefied substances, like vitamin B 12, which costs several thousand a kilogram and has come in by air to be doled out by the microgram into .1 percent capsules, its a whole different quandary.

Such are the decisions toward which Torske directs a lifetime of expertise.  And through it all, he has retained his wanderlust.  He ticks off the number of countries still on his list to visit, and tallies them against the list of locales he will visit in the upcoming months.

In China they have a saying, he remarks.  You are either an old friend, or a new friend on the way to becoming an old one.  I now, with DVA, look forward to turning new friends into old.  For the professional apprentice with his own wanderlust and warm personal sense, this may a wise and fruitful team to join.

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