Sitting in his brightly lit office overlooking the green hills of rural Westphalia, surrounded by photographs of aluminium and titanium castings, Phillip Schack has drawn a blue triangle on a piece of paper. Pointing to a small shaded section at its apex, he says: "Look. If that's your market, up at the top, high-quality end, then you're well protected from global competition. It's only if you're down here," he adds, pointing to the triangle's much wider base, "that globalization is a threat. So we need to take care of our triangle."

Schack is managing director of Tital, a leading manufacturer of precision parts for aeroplanes and racing cars. In the corridors and workshops of this company, which employs 520 people in Bestwig, a town of 11,000 near Dortmund, the crisis of the last five years has not been a subject of anguished internal debate.

Exports around the world have increased by 50 percent over the last decade, as the market for high-class titanium products booms. Revenue is up. Apprentices are being taken on. A new plant for small aluminium castings has just been opened in the Chinese town of Nantong, near Shanghai. Times may be hard, but the company is thriving at the top end of Schack's triangle of prosperity.