Blogger: Nino Gruettke, Managing Director, VNU Exhibitions Asia Pacific
Even by DLG’s standards, the decision to partner with VNU Exhibitions Asia Pacific (VNU) in Bangkok for an Asian edition of its market-leading event Agritechnica is globally significant. This event, which hopes to emulate the success of its 400,000sqm forebear in Hanover, Germany, is making a bid to become the region’s defining event for the agricultural industry.
And as Managing Director of VNU Exhibitions Asia Pacific, I can tell you I haven’t seen a partnership like it in the industry until now. Our companies compete on livestock and now cooperate on agriculture.
But such a partnership in Thailand makes sense for organisers of the biggest agri-business events in the world; the country is a hub for machinery trade in a region known the world over for its agricultural industry.
The world’s top agricultural companies want to stand out in the region, and Agritechnica Asia will bring a new platform and opportunities to the development of agriculture in Asia. Mechanization through modern agricultural machinery will increase significantly in the next decade.
VNU doesn’t look at a country so much as the size of a buyers – in this case the farmers looking to improve the mechanisation and equipment they use in production.
Similar to VIV where 67 per cent of attendees are international, we are trying to start with an international show. Southeast Asia is, for example, the most neutral place to meet both the Chinese and the Indians.
And if you’ve got the top 20 Chinese and Indian companies, then that solves most of the requirements for your exhibitors. Add to this the Koreans, Thais, Indonesians and Malays and you have a really wonderful show.
And it’s here where TCEB can really help an exhibition organiser looking to launch in Thailand. Through a variety of campaigns such as their Exhibiz in Market campaign; a drive towards expanding exhibition space at events in Thailand, or the visitor promotion campaign Connect Businesses, which rewards a ‘Visitor-Promoter’ for organising a trade mission consisting of at least 10 visitors from the same country to Thailand at the rate of USD100 per visitor, TCEB is on-hand to support us.
While we and DLG are rewriting the rules of partnership in Asia, we do so safe in the knowledge that we have another partner already on the ground in TCEB.
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