Everyone is looking for a way into China these days, keen to get a piece of the world's biggest economic boom story.

But the Chinese market is a notoriously knotty one and getting a feel for the way business is done there is a difficult job - suppliers can have an arbitrary approach and the business culture is often strange, making outsourcing a risky task.

Which is where Corkman Liam Casey comes in. His company PCH International sources low-priced components in China for some of the world's biggest IT and telecoms companies, and in doing so has become Ireland's biggest exporter from China.

"We help companies to take advantage of China. We develop customised supply chain solutions for clients around the world. A lot of customers come here and work with us - they see the facilities are good," said Mr Casey.

The first word that hits you when you open PCH's glossy brochure is CHINA, in big letters. We meet in Mr Casey's new, bigger offices in Shenzhen's plush CITIC tower.

The company, which was set up in 1996, operates largely from China's southern boomtown but has its headquarters in Cork, a fact Mr Casey is extremely proud of.

And it's growing strongly, with 70 employees working in offices in the United States, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mexico, Hungary and, most recently, Brazil. And, of course, Cork.

Mr Casey expects 30 per cent revenue growth this year, while sales this year were around $40 million (€29.3 million), up from $10 million in 2002. He won't reveal profit figures, saying his is a high-volume, low-margin business.

"If you're at a big US firm and you're responsible for purchasing, it has to be ethical: no sweatshops, no child labour, plus high quality. To source a product in China is easy, just do an internet search and you'll find hundreds of companies in China doing your product. But if you're sitting in the United States or Europe and you want to put your brand on a product, then you can't do that over the internet - the risks are much too high," he said.

"There is a perception that there are loads of sweatshops here but it's definitely not the case. Some people come out here with a certain arrogant perception that they are going to teach the Chinese the right way to make things, but they get a shock," he said.

Mr Casey has built the success of PCH on the quality of products it supplies, the reliability of the products and the way the company delivers them on time.

The focus of this approach is PCH's real-time supply chain management system, which allows a client to track their products from source right until delivery.

Even finding your way around the Guangdong province, with its thousands of tech companies, can be a nightmare. The system lets customers see the whole supply chain in action. They see the factories themselves, suppliers' inventories, capacity and even the supply of raw materials. It shows how close to shipping a product is. It shows where it is if it has been shipped.

Transparency is one of Mr Casey's mantras. "Confusion is used as a competitive advantage out here at times. To get around this, we do maps of the area, which we break down into parishes and townlands, like at home. This makes sense of the locations in the region," he said.

"Look at this. Zhang Mu Tou is great for printers. Da Lan is the place to go for cables and connectors. In Changping there are 180 Taiwanese businesses, mostly making cables and connectors. We'd have access to a lot of those.

"I'm a big believer in transparency. Frankly, it takes too much energy to hide things and cover things up."

Mr Casey's career has taken him all over the place. He was very much the man about town as general manager of Tricot Marine on Grafton Street in the early 1990s, leaving the clothes shop to set up Meadows and Byrne with Freda Hayes in 1993.

He spent two years there, then moved to the US where he worked for a trading company in California, spent a year there, before coming back to Ireland where he set up PCH in Cork.

He first came to Taiwan, then China, in 1996 trying to source components. The majority of PCH's clients are based in the US, dotted around the country and on the west coast.

The company's global nature - he has just opened an office in Sao Paolo - saw him fly around the world nine times in 2002.

He still spends about two months a year travelling, circling the earth around twice a year, and he lives in a hotel in Shenzhen: probably the reason he's opened a travel agency in Hong Kong.

As far as working in China is concerned, Mr Casey reckons that communications can be a problem, but generally he finds it a great place to do business.

"One thing I tell you, the perception that the people are difficult is wrong. The people are fantastic, they're brilliant to work with, bright, pro-active and pro-business," he said.

"Coming in to China with money is not a guarantee of success - I came here with no money. I keep the focus on the client. I've always been in the client service business, whether it's PC components to some big US multinational or selling suits to someone on Grafton Street."