CITME 2012 Successful, ITMA Asia brand takes a beating

Dyeing, Printing, Processing

CITME 2012 Successful, ITMA Asia brand takes a beating

The well hyped ITMA Asia + CITME 2012 has come to a conclusion on June 16, 2012 after a being in business for five days. While the organisers announced that the show is the largest ever under this banner by participation of exhibitors, there are doubts if the visitor participation was equally warm. While official number on the visitor and its demographic classification are yet to be published, one could guess the rankings from past experiences. The local visitors from the main land and around were possibly constituted over 80 percent or more by numbers, followed by India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia and so on. Well, there were faces from Latin America and Middle East as well but the international visitation was remarkably poor.

On the exhibitors participation front, more than 60% were from China and rest were mostly from Europe and neighbouring countries like Taiwan, Korea, Japan and India. Thus, making it a huge display of China’s achievement in textile engineering and technology and was in complete contrast to ITMA in Europe. On the face of it, ITMA Asia + CITME 2012 gave a feel of any other Chinese local exhibition. While the Chinese manufactures were all out to woo the visitors with their latest developments in technology and machinery, other exhibitors have not come with the latest developments that were showcased in ITMA Barcelona well there were few exceptions of course. Possibly, the lack of strong intellectual property laws still haunts the exhibitors. There were cases of displaying copy machines in the past and that continued in this year’s event too. The organisers have covered the copied machine as eyewash which was later uncovered by the exhibitor very next day. Thus, no matter how the IP rules in China, several local textile machinery manufactures are happy coping European technology rather than investing in R&D as it is the easiest way to be in business.

However, on the face of it, the exhibitors- be it local or international, were happy with the responses that have received in spite of market condition in China at this moment. But, several exhibitors have discussed about being fatigued after the mega show in ITMA Barcelona and attending too many shows across the globe! Even there were suggestions from exhibitors and visitors that ITMA Asia became more of ‘ITMA China’ and there are serious needs of relocating or rotating the event within other Asian countries. It is, however, to be decided by the show owners and definitely commercial aspects would play a heavier role while making any such drastic changes for the future. But the next ITMA Asia + CITME will be held in June 2014, in Shanghai again as per the official announcement.