Strong performance for upcoming bauma China event

The organisers of bauma China have every right to feel pleased with their work - Mike Woof reports

As the 5930 Bauma China 2012 exhibition closed its doors, the organisers were likely congratulating themselves over a highly successful event. Anyone walking the aisles at this exhibition cannot fail to have noticed the huge numbers of visitors, with early figures saying that 180,000 people visited the show.

This was a notable 16% increase over the 155,615 visiting this exhibition in 2010. Despite the slowdown in the Chinese economy, there is clearly a strong interest in new construction machines in China.

The event had a notably international flavour too, with a range of languages audible amongst the visitors and apart from Chinese and English, a lot of visitors could be overheard speaking Russian or Arabic for example.

After China, the top 10 visitor countries and regions were in order; Russia, Korea, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Turkey.

And for the first time, bauma China occupied all of the exhibition space, over 300,000m2, at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.

This represents a 30% increase over bauma China 2010. The fair also had a record-breaking number of exhibitors with 2,718 from 38 countries, an increase of 46% over the 1,858 from 37 countries in 2010.

Of these, 1837 exhibitors were Chinese firms. After China, the top five exhibitor countries were; Germany with 172, Italy with 122, the US with 116, Korea with 67 and Japan with 49. In addition, bauma China also had eight national pavilions, from Austria, Germany, Finland, Great Britain, Italy, Korea, Spain and the US, as well as a joint stand of exhibitors from Incheon City in Korea.
Translating numbers of attendees through the entrance into machine sales is another factor altogether, but by any measure the organisers have every right to feel pleased with the results of this large and extremely well run exhibition.

What is clear from this show is that Chinese manufacturers are also showing that they can introduce innovative new products that stand up on the international market, and can rival those products from Europe, Japan, South Korea or the USA.

Chinese companies are developing their own technologies, and have become the dominant force in the crane and concrete pumping sectors in particular.

Investment in research and development is impressive in many of the leading Chinese manufacturers and while some of the technology in the concrete pumping sector may have been bought-in, though the acquisition of leading European firms like 2203 CIFA, 1259 Putzmeister and 4991 Schwing by 1175 Zoomlion, 1170 Sany and 2490 XCMG respectively, those same three Chinese crane manufacturers have become leaders in their own right through in-house development.

Several of the larger Chinese manufacturers have stated aims to be amongst the world’s top 10 construction equipment firms within the next 5-10 years and if this exhibition is anything to go by, they are well on track. 178 Caterpillar and 2300 Komatsu seem likely to retain their positions as the largest and second largest manufacturers in the construction equipment sector respectively.

But which firms will be next in line is anyone’s guess at present. Of course, the major manufacturers based in Europe, Japan, South Korea or the USA are not going to give up market share easily, and it is clear there will be a great deal of competition between the various companies in coming years.

But China is the engine for global economic development, a message that has been heard from the leading international equipment companies as well as indigenous Chinese firms. New investment programmes due in 2013 will help power the world economy out of its current difficulties.

From the visitor numbers alone, bauma China 2012 has been an extremely successful event, and while the Chinese market is not as strong as it was during 2011, it is clear the country’s long term prospects are bright.