WCA November 2017

Record visitor numbers for booming Southeast Asia For an idea of how important Southeast Asia is to the wire and cable industry, you really have to look little further than the biennial staging of wire Southeast Asia in Bangkok, Thailand. The industry as a whole is going through somewhat of a prolonged boom in the region, highlighted by anticipated infrastructure spending of some €524bn by 2020 in just four countries – Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. “Thailand is considered to be the central springboard to the up-and-coming markets of Southeast Asia due to a boom in the building, energy and automotive sector,” said Friedrich-Georg Kehrer, global portfolio director for metals and flow technologies, of exhibition organisers Messe Düsseldorf. That was certainly backed up by a record number of visitors to the BITEC Centre in Bangkok, with more than 8,400 attending from 50 countries. This equates to a 20 per cent rise in visitors from the previous staging in 2015. The appeal of the region was also highlighted by the number of visiting companies from outside the region. From the 400 leading industry names from 30 different countries, 95 per cent came from

outside Thailand, with country groups from Austria, China, Germany, Italy, Taiwan, UK and USA. Our review of the exhibition starts on page 46.

David Bell Editor When and where

2018 27–28 February:

2017 7 November: CabWire 2017 – conference – Düsseldorf, Germany Organisers : IWMA

2018 6–8 March: AMI Cables Conference – Cologne, Germany Organisers:

2017 6–9 December: Iran Wire – exhibition – Tehran, Iran Organisers :

Advanced Cable North America – conference – Atlanta, Georgia, USA Organisers : Integer Research Tel : +44 207 5031265 Email : info@ integer-research.com Website : www. integer-research.com

Applied Market Information LLC Tel : +44 117 314 8111 Email : lr@amiplastics.com Website : www.amiplastics-na.com

Messe Düsseldorf GmbH Fax : +49 211 4560 668 Email : info@iranwire.ir Website : www.iranwire.ir

Fax : +44 121 781 7404 Email : info@iwma.org Website : www.iwma.org

Photo credit: bigstockphoto.com “Azadi Tower, Tehran, Iran” Photographer: Kuhredk

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Wire & Cable ASIA – November/December 2017