Major UK Water Industry Event

Faced with generally falling attendances, IWEX 2003, the International Water and Effluent Exhibition, staged at the NEC in November, took early actions to ensure the ongoing success of the event

The IWEX "Experience" Captures Imagination of Exhibitors and Visitors to the UK Major Water Industry Event.

Faced with generally falling attendances at exhibitions across many market sectors, Turret-RAI, the organisers of IWEX 2003 the International Water and Effluent Exhibition, staged at the NEC in November, took early actions to ensure the ongoing success of the event, which was first staged some seventeen years ago.

Instead of simply focusing on an exhibition, their plan was to create a "complete experience" for exhibitors and visitors alike and through that creation, a resounding success was achieved.

The core event continued to be the exhibition, where over three hundred exhibitors and co-exhibitors from the UK and Europe, Africa, Asia and America displayed a wider range of technology than had ever been witnessed at previous IWEX events.

With AMP 4 clearly on their minds, many exhibitors were keen to address those issues, which, they believe, will form a key part of the buying pattern from 2005 onward and, in many cases, to clearly demonstrate their broader design and manufacturing capabilities.

This concept was summed up by Manchester-based Mono Pumps who reported, "Whilst primarily recognised as pump manufacturers, IWEX gave us the opportunity to demonstrate our far broader range of equipment for the water and wastewater treatment industry".

Initial analysis of visitor demographics show that whilst the core visitors continue to represent the water production and waste water processing sector, an increase in number of Civil Engineers, Environmental Consultants and representatives of manufacturing industries took time to visit IWEX, with over one third stating that they had major purchasing responsibility within their organisation.

Over the three-day period of the event, many exhibitors took the opportunity to launch new products and stage presentations for the water industry media, who attended in force.

The Achilles Group were one such organisation who took advantage of the assembled media to demonstrate their integrated data management services for the water and utilities supply chain and to launch their UVDB Live event in 2004.

Speaking for Achilles, Elizabeth Jarvis emphasised the importance of building and maintaining relationships with the media and felt that IWEX was an ideal event at which to accomplish this objective.

The exhibition experience was further broadened through the opportunity given to companies to stage technical product demonstrations in a purpose-built forum, with subjects as diverse as the "Case for Ductile Iron" from Electrosteel and "Benefits of Internet-Enabled Meter Reading" from Meter Provida, being just two of the well-attended sessions.

Away from the hubbub of the exhibition floor, two auditoria provided facilities for a three-day programme of seminars and conferences, highlights of which included a detailed presentation on global opportunities in the water sector, where the British Government UK Trade and Investment Department gave significant insight to would-be exporters in the proven way of developing business overseas.

In his opening address, the Minister for the Environment, Elliot Morley, had stressed the importance of the contribution of the water and wastewater industry companies to a growth export opportunity.

With a closer focus on the UK market, the Envirowise unit of the Defra focused on the recently introduced Enhanced Capital Allowances programme, which enables British companies to offset capital expenditure against taxation on a year-one basis, this providing a major incentive to both business development and an improved environment, in the process.

Internationally, the visitor profile showed that one in twelve registered visitors to IWEX came from overseas a far higher proportion than in 2001 with some ninety countries being represented.

Through the joint initiatives of Defra, JEMU and UK Trade and Investment, official inward mission delegations were received from Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and China, in addition to which individual international visitors travelled from all parts of the world to attend the event.

Away from the NEC, the IWEX Gala Evening and Innovation Awards Presentations, staged in the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, saw over two hundred and fifty industry professionals coming together for an evening of networking and entertainment and to honour those companies whose entries for the Awards had been assessed as winners and highly commended by the independent judging panel.

As the exhibition drew to a close, Rob Lozowski commented upon the event.

"We knew, some time ago, that to simply stage yet another exhibition was not the way forward for IWEX," he stated.

"With so much taking place in the water and waste water industries, we needed to broaden IWEX to address such issues, whilst still staging a first class exhibition.

By developing the seminar and conference programme, the product demonstrations, the broader profile of visitors, the scale of international participation and the completely re-structured IWEX Awards, I believe that we have given the industry and event of which to be proud and one which has provided opportunities not only for business development, but also to broaden awareness of what is happening in the industry at this exciting time.

Whilst it is far too early to be definitive about our plans for IWEX 2005, we will, in the coming months be talking to representatives from all sides of the industry to ascertain their views as to how IWEX may best continue to serve the water and waste water treatment sector.

Finally I must add how grateful we were for the time and enthusiasm given by exhibitors and visitors, alike, to ensure the success of IWEX 2003".

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