Dubai-based trade fair organiser’s six shows feature 5,174 exhibitors
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Dubai, UAE: Messe Frankfurt Middle East, one of the region’s leading trade fair organisers, has reported encouraging results for the first six months of 2015, as parent company Messe Frankfurt Group eyes a record global sales target of more than €600 million for the year.
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The Dubai-based subsidiary’s six exhibitions between January and June 2015, including Intersec, Paperworld, Leatherworld, Beautyworld, and Hardware+Tools Middle East, along with Automechanika Dubai featured a combined 5,174 exhibitors from 60 countries, spanning more than 98,000 sqm net of exhibition space.
The six events also together attracted 100,425 trade visitors from 130 countries. Excluding Leatherworld Middle East, which was held for the first time in 2015, the total net exhibition space growth year-on-year was 11 per cent, while 7 per cent was the growth rate for both exhibitor and visitor numbers.
The continued progress of the trade shows, all taking place in Dubai, indicate their key contribution to Messe Frankfurt Group’s global sales revenue target of more than €600 million in 2015, making it the first German trade fair organiser to pass the milestone.
Messe Frankfurt Middle East is also on course to continue its own double digit growth in sales revenue, which grew by 22 per cent year-on-year in 2014, and at an impressive compound annual growth rate of 17 per cent over the last six years.
“The continued success and steady growth of Messe Frankfurt Middle East’s events is a result of being able to accurately predict and interpret the key trends and requirements of the market,” said Ahmed Pauwels, CEO of Messe Frankfurt Middle East.
“It’s also indicative of Dubai’s position as a commerce-driven environment, with world-class economic, social, cultural and technological systems that facilitate international trade, making it the ideal destination for fast-growing exhibitions such as ours.
“Our shows’ footprints cover not only the wider Middle East and African region, but further afield into Central and South Asia, as well as the CIS. We will continue to work together with our exhibiting partners on reaching out to new areas and explore possibilities to expand our current portfolio of events while maintaining the reputed Messe Frankfurt mark of quality,” added Pauwels.
Among the highlights for the first half 2015 for Messe Frankfurt Middle East was the successful launch of Leatherworld Middle East in May. The three-day trade and networking platform for the burgeoning regional leather industry made a promising start, featuring 85 exhibitors and attracting 2,439 visitors.
Meanwhile, Messe Frankfurt Middle East’s fast-growing Conference Division continues to forge ahead with relevant industry events, with the 1st edition of the highly successful Smart Traffic Middle East in Abu Dhabi in May the latest addition to a 15-strong conference portfolio.
The second half of 2015 will feature a number of exhibitions and conferences including Materials Handling Middle East, Light Middle East, the Pediatric Orthopaedic Surgery Conference, the GCC Virology Conference, the BOHS Worker Health Protection Conference and the Light Middle East Conference.
Globally, the Messe Frankfurt Group has a network of 29 subsidiaries, and organises more than 120 trade fairs in 30 locations around the world, of which more than half take place outside Germany.
At the Group’s Half-Year Press Conference in Frankfurt earlier this month, Messe Frankfurt President and Chief Executive Officer Wolfgang Marzin said: “If everything stays on schedule, we want to be the first German trade fair company to pass the €600 million sales mark by a significant margin”.
This means that the Group will be taking up where it left off following its previous record year 2014 – with sales of approximately €554 million and annual net income of over €33 million. Marzin added: “We are well on schedule with our defined strategic framework Messe Frankfurt 2020 and already have our strategic sights set on further developments up until 2025”.