The organisers of BIEMH have prepared the first set of layout drawings for the event, which on paper involves 60,000 m2 of exhibition space. In all, 924 firms have so far booked space at the Bilbao Exhibition Centre for May 31 – June 5 for this, the 26th Spanish Machine-tool Biennial.

As usual, the exhibition will be broken down by sectors. This year it will feature 12 areas. Cutting Machines will occupy the whole of Hall 1, while Hall 2 will be divided up between Welding, Handling and Robotics. Hall 3 will house Tools and Accessories, Automation and Hydraulics & Pneumatics, and Hall 5 will be home to Shaping Machines, Laser and Marking, Metrology and CAD/CAM/CAE firms.

With more than two months to go before the event, stands for BIEMH 2010 are still being booked as the sector slowly begins to emerge from the recession and gradual improvements appear in the main performance indicators, according to data from AFM (Spanish Association of Machine-Tool Manufacturers).

At the same time, the campaign to attract visitors to BIEMH is gathering pace, and to date more than 30,000 trade specialists from 54 countries have expressed an interest in attending the event.

Representatives of the organisers travelled to India and China at the end of February, and are scheduled to visit Mexico, Brazil and Argentina shortly to promote the event through specific actions aimed at machine-tool-using industries (railways, shipbuilding, domestic appliances, aeronautics, wind power, the automotive industry, etc).

Finally, the programme to attract delegations (a major feature of the campaign) is continuing in more than 100 countries all over the world, thanks to the efforts of the trade liaison offices of the ICEX (Spanish Institute for Foreign Trade), the network of offices of the Basque Government-dependent association SPRI (Association for the Promotion and Restructuring of Industry) and the agents abroad of the Bilbao Exhibition Centre itself.

Dept. of Communication, March 2010