Success of Hannover Points to a Healthy Industry
The EPA team's feet are still throbbing from a whistle-stop two day visit to the 2008 Hannover Messe and we can attest to a successful show which should give plenty of encouragement during a time when news headlines can sometimes feel dispiriting.
The first reports after the close on Friday suggest figures of 200,000 visitors to the show in the north of Germany, which is a 30% increase on last year. 5,100 exhibitors from 60 countries were there to provide a fascinating snapshot of the industry as it is in 2008 and how it is likely to progress.
Deutsche Messe Managing Board Chairman, Sepp D. Heckmann, certainly sees the show as a barometer of the industry as a whole, commenting: “Across the board, industrial enterprises are reporting full order books for 2008 and good prospects for 2009. Expectations for a favourable business cycle remain high.”
There was a particularly strong attendance of people from India and China, again mirroring global economic trends and from the size of the area devoted to Energy Efficiency, industry is responding with vigour to the problems posed by climate change.
It was good to see a strong presence from the usual big players but equally interesting to speak to the smaller independent companies who proved that you don’t necessarily need to be a huge multi-national to provide some of the most impressive innovations at an international show.
Another encouraging aspect of the show was the number of young people visiting (20,000 in total). Hopefully some of these will have had their interest in engineering sparked by their time at the show to alleviate the apparent skills shortages.