IFAT Exhibit Space is Fully Booked

Five months before it opens, the IFAT Entsorga trade fair in Germany has sold out its 2.3 million square feet (215,000 square meters) of exhibition space. 

According to the show’s organizers, Messe München, it is the first time the show has fully pre-leased all the exhibition halls at the New Munich Trade Fair Centre. 

IFAT Entsorga is billed by Messe München as “the world’s premier trade show for innovations and services in water, sewage, waste and raw materials management.” 

The 2012 event takes place from May 7 to 11 in Munich and will include 1.9 million square feet of indoor exhibition space and 375,000square feet of outdoor space, setting a new record for the show. The number of exhibitors will exceed the 2,730 that took part in the 2010 IFAT Entsorga event, the organizers say.

“We are particularly pleased in this context with the response from exhibitors from abroad,” says Eugen Egetenmeir, managing director of Messe München. “A total of 27 international joint stands are registered from 17 countries, while in 2010 there were 18 international pavilions from 13 countries. Canada, Japan, Norway, Russia and Spain are taking joint stands for the first time. These strong participation figures, resulting in fully booked halls, show clearly that companies – in Germany and around the world – regard IFAT ENTSORGA as the leading trade fair for their sector.” 

The event’s organizers also say the recycling management product category “will occupy a total of fully 55,000 square meters (590,000 square feet).”

Another category with a sizable presence at the 2012 IFAT Entsorga event will be waste-to-energy, according to Messe München. “IFAT Entsorga 2012 showcases the diverse technologies and concepts involved in obtaining valuable energy from waste,” the group states in a news release.

“Currently, an estimated €5.6 billion ($7.25 billion) is being invested each year in building, expanding, modernizing and maintaining waste incineration plant and power stations which use refuse-derived fuel (RDF),” Messe München writes in a news release. “By 2015 this figure is expected to rise to €7.8 billion ($10.1 billion). Accordingly, the capacity which these systems will be able to deal with will also rise from currently 210 million metric tons per year to 270 million metric tons.” (The source of those figures is German environmental and technology consulting firm Ecoprog GmbH, who conducted a study in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology, Oberhausen, Germany.)

The researchers also identified the People’s Republic of China as the world’s fastest growing market for such systems. Nearly half of all new capacity installed last year was built in China. The report cites a further 61 waste-to-energy plants currently under construction in the country, which combined will be able to convert some 18.6 million metric tons of municipal waste each year.

More information for those wishing to attend the event can be found at www.ifat.de.