SMM 2010 fully booked

This top event in world shipbuilding will attract exhibitors from 50 nations, including the major yards from the leading shipbuilding nations, the market leaders of the marine equipment industry, and a whole range of innovative small and medium-sized companies, which aroused enormous interest at previous SMM events with their creative commitment and their new technology and product developments. SMM is the world’s leading international shipbuilding exhibition, and is the trendsetter and trend accelerator for maritime technologies.
More than 100 new exhibitors from all product areas have been accepted for SMM 2010. In the shipyard sector, for example, the Indian company Pipavav Shipyard Ltd. chose SMM 2010 for its first presentation on the international scene. It is India’s largest and most advanced shipyard, building freighters, offshore vessels and naval ships. Pipavav is a private-sector shipyard with ambitious plans – it aims to be among the world’s Top Ten shipbuilding companies by 2015. In the engines sector, a new exhibitor is John Deere Power Systems from France. In the offshore sector, Zamil Offshore Services from Saudi Arabia will be working to make new international business contacts at SMM 2010.
New product developments are essential in view of the many international regulations, and these will make SMM 2010 a platform for the latest marketable innovations, showing what they can do in this competitive forum. That applies in particular to environmental technologies, environmental protection, emissions reduction systems and energy efficiency. Contributors to these key subjects at SMM 2010 will certainly include the shipyards, engine manufacturers, electric and electronic suppliers with their new developments. Offshore and special-purpose vessels will also take on a greater role than in the past. And marine equipment suppliers are expanding in this segment.
SMM 2010 will be breaking records again, like the previous SMM. It completely fills the exhibition space, that is about 90,000 square metres, including all exhibition halls and the open-air spaces – surely a signal for the upswing, following a year that brought economic difficulties not only for ship building. The exhibitors of the leading shipbuilding nations in particular were keen to increase their exhibition space.
The financial and economic crisis has bottomed out – that is the general consensus among experts. And SMM 2010 will benefit from that. The global economy will grow by 3.1% in 2010, according to the forecast by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in October 2009. The IMF attributes this development mainly to the dynamism in Asia, chiefly in China and India. China has recently also stirred up some movement in the shipbuilding market, and now holds top position in the world shipbuilding league, overtaking South Korea in terms of orders received. As reported by Clarkson Research, the global order book was 7,954 ships on 1 January 2010, with tonnage of 152.5 million CGT. China accounts for 34.9% of that, and Korea for 34.6%. Reflecting this economic development, there was strong demand for exhibition space at SMM Hamburg from China, and it is already apparent that large numbers of visitors and delegations will be coming from China to the SMM.
Despite the IMF forecast, the management boards of shipbuilding companies are by no means euphoric. But, gradually, optimism is beginning to spread that the global shipbuilding industry will pick up again this year. Having experienced a real boom in the past years, it will now benefit from continuing globalisation and the demand for green transport. The Community of European Shipyards’ Associations (CESA) expects demand for new buildings to recover this year, says Dr. Reinhard Lüken, CESA Secretary General. As the financial market gradually gets back to normal, ordering will also increase again.
It looks like this prospect is what motivated more nations to present their companies with official national pavilions at SMM 2010. This time there will be about 30 of them, including the “usual exhibitors” such as Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Turkey and the United States. New national pavilions this year will be Argentina, India, Singapore and Sweden. That owes a great deal to the overseas events held with great success last year, that is SMM Istanbul and SMM India – SMM is the only shipbuilding fair that provides constant exchanges between international players and regional maritime suppliers, at the leading SMM Hamburg one year and at the SMM events overseas the next.
SMM 2010 will be backed by an impressive supporting programme, with some 150 workshops, symposia and conferences, covering all the key issues for the shipbuilding sector at the present time. Such as the Ship Finance Forum, which traditionally brings together bankers, ship owners and managers of the shipyard and marine equipment industries the day before SMM, that is on 6 September 2010.
Global Maritime Environmental Congress
The first Global Maritime Environmental Congress (GMEC) will be held on 7 and 8 September. It brings the leading decision makers of the maritime industry together with representatives from government, academia and civil society, to discuss achievements so far and to set new courses for the maritime future in environmental protection.
A workshop on offshore issues will be conducted on 8 and 9 September. The CIMAC Circle, that is the meeting of the International Council on Combustion Engines, will be held on 9 September, when it will focus on costs.
SMM 2010 and GMEC will be officially opened at CCH – Congress Center Hamburg on the evening before the start of the trade fair, that is on 6 September 2010.