UK pharmaceutical equipment shown at ACHEMA 2003

Case studies from Achema 2003 from the experiences of a selection of UK exhibitors involved in showing their pharmaceutical manufacturing or processing equipment

The Achema exhibition has increasingly become a key focal point for international business within the global market of chemical processing.

Bookings are well underway for the 2006 show in Frankfurt.

The following are case studies carried out after Achema 2003 with a selection of UK exhibitors involved in showing pharmaceutical manufacturing or processing equipment.

Manesty are the world's largest supplier of solid dose pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment, with core businesses in tablet presses, tablet coaters and tablet tooling.

Linda Cashmore, Marketing Services Manager at Manesty, said "We attend ACHEMA because it is one of the largest and most successful shows and is particularly important to the process industry.

At the 2003 show, Manesty launched their Model Xpress 700 Tablet Press, the largest press the company have produced to date.

The new Xpress range has been heralded as their most significant development of the last 20 years.

Also after a successful launch at ACHEMA 2000 of the laboratory/small scale pilot plant XL lab01 Tablet Coating Machine, ACHEMA 2003 saw the launch of its 'big brother' the XL lab02.

"Manesty had a total of 361 visitors coming from 297 companies.

Although the majority were from Germany, there were significantly large numbers of visitors from India, Indonesia and Switzerland.

46% of the visitors were from local manufacturing companies, 33% from blue-chip companies and the remaining 21% either generic or contract manufacturers.

We also had in attendance on our stand, a large number of distributors who had been actively promoting the exhibition throughout their territories.

Membrane Extraction Technology (MET) is an award-winning chemical engineering company, with particular expertise in chemical separations using membrane technologies.

Dr Lina Christopoulou, their Commercial Development Manager said, "Our main objective in exhibiting at ACHEMA 2003 was to develop an understanding of the needs and opportunities for our company in the international marketplace, particularly in the areas of environmental protection and organic solvent nanofiltration.

"Our booth was visited by a wide range of people, of most interest to us being senior process development engineers in major chemical and pharmaceutical companies.

By the end of the fair we had made close to 100 interesting new contacts.

As a result of our attendance, we were able to share information about our technologies with the right people in approximately 30 major pharmaceutical and chemical companies, such as GSK, Degussa and Dow.

"We also initiated several collaborations with systems suppliers that highlighted for us the need in the industry for solvent nanofiltration membranes, such as those in which we specialise.

What was also significant was that our presence at ACHEMA gave credibility to the company as a whole, placing us on the same playing field as much bigger, better-known companies.

Powder Systems Limited (PSL) design and build high containment biopharmaceutical equipment for the latest generation of high potency drugs.

PSL Systems Division provides a complete service, from process analysis and design, through to systems design, build and commissioning.

Areas of high containment expertise include: filtration and drying, isolators, dispensing, drum filling, powder transfer.

Connie Bird, Marketing Executive at PSL said: "About 75% of turnover is exported, so International trade shows are an essential part of our marketing activities.

We exhibited at ACHEMA because of the unmatched quality and quantity of visitors attending the event.

From our 35m2 booth in Hall 4.1, we showed our latest product developments to existing customers, reinforcing current relationships.

Developments shown included our range of high containment split butterfly valves, PSL ChargePoint, which was heavily promoted along with filtration and containment exhibits.

"ACHEMA 2003 was a great success for PSL.

We met with a large number of existing and new contacts, mainly for the German, Swiss, French, UK, Scandinavian and American markets which have already resulted in a considerable increase of ChargePoint sales.

Since our exposure at ACHEMA 2003, we have also had particularly good success with OEMs in Germany taking up the ChargePoint as a standard component to be offered as an enhancement to their own equipment.

So far we can directly attribute sales of over £250k to ACHEMA, and expect this figure to rise much further with the conversion of several larger isolator and filter dryer enquiries in UK and throughout Europe.

ACHEMA is a truly international event; we met decision makers from all over the world providing us with a magnificent amount of opportunities for the coming months and years".

Thomas Broadbent and Sons is a leading manufacturer of centrifuges for solids/liquids separation in the International chemicals, fine chemicals and pharmaceutical industries.

As a world leader in centrifuge technology, Broadbent has been particularly successful throughout Asia, with recent orders from China, India and Thailand and Taiwan currently in excess of £20M.

For these markets, Broadbent Decanters are highly competitive and extremely compatible with the processes used to produce Pure Terephthalic Acid.

John Wright, Broadbents Business Development Manager said "ACHEMA 2003 worked well for our company, providing us with a substantial number of enquiries and valuable contacts.

In addition it proved to be a cost-effective platform for collecting valuable market intelligence and a central point for face-to-face meetings with a variety of existing and potential specifiers and buyers from the International process industries, from all over the world.

As a result of our positive experience in Frankfurt, we also chose to attend the ACHEMASIA show in Beijing in 2004.

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