Visitors had 380 exhibitor booths to choose from at CeMAT Asia this year.

Over 45,000 people visited the combined trade shows of CeMAT Asia and PTC Asia at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre last week.

Wolfgang Lenarz, senior vice president of show organiser Deutsche Messe AG, says the outcome of the trade fair was very satisfactory.

"The results were much better than expected. We see the excellent response to our exhibitions in Shanghai as an extremely positive signal for the relevant sectors of the industry," Lenarz says.

Held from 26-29 October, CeMAT Asia for the materials handling industry and PTC Asia for the power transmission industry saw exhibitor numbers grow 6.5% from 2008 to 1,687. Over the four days, about 47,330 visitors from 50 countries viewed exhibits over a total display area of 94,000sqm (1,011,804sqft).

CeMAT Asia accommodated 380 exhibitors over a space of 23,000 sqm (247,569 sqft). Exhibitors included Kion, Crown, Heli, Global-Power, Liugong, Global Friend, Interroll, Kardex, Abus and Gorbel.

Joe Ritter, managing director of Crown's commercial operations for Asia, says this is the first year the forklift manufacturer participated in CeMAT Asia. "It is a great opportunity for us to introduce Crown's products. We are extremely happy with the quality of visitors and will surely come next year because of the importance of CeMAT."

However, Forkliftaction.com's sales executive for Asia, Patrick Chin, reports that for the first time, major forklift players like Toyota, Jungheinrich, TVH, Doosan Infracore, Komatsu, Mitsubishi and Nissan did not participate in CeMAT Asia.

Chin adds: "Like last year, I hardly saw visitors from Europe and North America as many say this show is more a local show [while] it is supposed to be an international show."

Dennis Cheng, the sales manager of forklift parts supplier We-Lift Equipment Co Ltd, was among those not impressed with this year's CeMAT. " Heli was the (only) major Chinese exhibitor and we didn't get any customer leads from the show."

CeMAT Asia will be held with PTC Asia again from 25-28 October 2010 in Shanghai. The show organisers are Deutsche Messe AG, Hannover Milano Fairs Shanghai Ltd, China Hydraulics Pneumatic & Seals Association, China General Machine Components Industry Association, China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing and the Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society.