IE expo – A Success Story

IE expo added another chapter in its success story this year, recording further substantial growth in exhibition space: on an area of 50,000 square meters, a total of 880 exhibitors and 38,000 visitors participated in China’s leading trade fair for environmental technology, which took place from May 20 to 22, 2014 at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.

Exhibition area reached its limits

Gerhard Gerritzen, Deputy Managing Director of Messe München, is delighted: “The results of these last three days have made it clear that the environmental technology industry in China is confident and benefits from political decisions as well as from a common rising awareness of the importance of integrated solutions. This new record in exhibition space underlines both the demand in the industry’s market as well as IE expo’s position as the number one sector event in the country.”

For the first time ever, IE expo occupied 50,000 square meters of exhibition space, an increase of 27 percent compared to the final results of last year’s show. “With IE expo 2015 coming up, we definitely have to consider extending by another hall. This way we would also be able to respond more easily to specific exhibitor requirements,” Gerritzen added.

Top industry professionals

As well as this rise in exhibition space, IE expo 2014 attracted around 38,000 (2013: 33,000) visitors, which is a considerable increase of more than 15 percent. The top ten visitor countries and regions besides China were – in this order – Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, Singapore, Russia, Vietnam, Malaysia and the US.

Moreover, the attendees can be characterized as highly professional. Chong Kit Lee, Marketing Services Manager at Sulzer Pumps Wastewater Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., affirmed that “compared to the past few years, the visitor quality this year is even better. We saw a lot of target customers like business owners, design institutes and general contractors, and they all expressed strong willingness to cooperate.”

State-of-the-art technology

The quality of the visitors was also a result of a high-class exhibitor line-up. Jiang Gang, General Manager of MMI-ZM Trade Fairs (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., explained that “IE expo 2014 once again gave evidence of its strong expertise in environmental technologies by bringing together the industry experts and key players. Jointly they offered the latest innovations in all segments of the show.”

The overall exhibitor numbers at China’s Leading Trade Fair for Water, Sewage, Refuse, Recycling, Air Pollution Control and Energy Conservation also showed a further increase. 880 exhibitors from 23 countries attended the event, 67 percent of them from the People’s Republic and 33 percent from abroad.

The high international participation was also underlined by the presence of nine national pavilions of exhibitors from France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United States. Rüdiger Heidebrecht, Head of Department, Training & International Cooperation at the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste (DWA) stated that “this year the German pavilion was by far the largest ever joint presentation of German companies in the history of IE expo. Although many companies already have subsidiaries in China, they still like to exhibit at the German pavilion, as this represents a seal of quality and is very much in demand.”

Interdisciplinary knowledge-transfer

As an integral component of the show, the supporting program of IE expo 2014 further emphasized the trade fair’s performance in global interdisciplinary knowledge-transfer. This was underlined by Guanping Ren, Secretary-General of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences: “IE expo is both an exhibition and a communication platform, which significantly improves the quality of the trade show. It is safe to say that IE expo has become China’s biggest and most comprehensive and professional trade show for environmental technology.”

The conference program including lectures, presentations and panel discussions was supported by government ministries and associations from China and abroad; altogether around 220 speakers and 4,000 visitors attended a total of 238 sessions.

Yibo Wen, Chairman of the China Environment Service Industry Association, concluded: “IE expo in general is very professional and comprehensive – hardly any other trade show in China can compete with it in these aspects.”

The next IE expo takes place from May 6 to 8, 2015 in Shanghai.