ITM set for another big show

ITM, in addition to being the largest exhibition of Turkey and Middle East in its field, is also one of the most important meeting-points for the global textile machinery industry.

The countdown has begun for the 7th ITM 2018 International Textile Machinery Exhibition to be held in Istanbul between April 14-17, 2018. With the participation of hundreds of manufacturers, each developing leading technologies in their respective fields, and the visits of the worldwide industry investors and trade delegations the event will turn into a massive global textile show.

There are about 30 exhibitors from India, but the organisers are confident that there would be many visitors from India since recently there have been a rise in machinery business between India and Turkey.

ITM Exhibition, in addition to being the largest exhibition of Turkey and Middle East in its field, is also one of the most important organisations of the industry globally. The ITM 2016 Exhibition, which was held between June 1-4, 2016 with a 100 per cent occupancy rate, hosted 1,200 exhibitors and representatives and approximately 50,000 visitors from 76 countries worldwide. For the ITM 2018, the space filling was completed months ago, and has accommodated all exhibitors right from cotton to yarn, weaving to knitting and digital printing to dyeing and finishing.

An important aspect that strengthens the bridging mission that Istanbul performs between the East and the West is the visa agreements between the Turkey and the emerging giants such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, etc. By means of this, ITM 2018 is going to play a major role in the integration of the both sides of the world by receiving a visitor crowd from these countries.

Beyond just being an exhibition, ITM 2018, which can be described as an event summit, will concurrently host HIGHTEX 2018, the Istanbul Yarn Fair and the ETT2018 Conference at the same time. Within HIGHTEX 2018, the presentations of nonwovens, technical textiles, smart textiles and the cutting-edge textile technologies will taken up, while the leading yarn manufacturers in the globe will showcase their latest trends and newest products to the visitors during Istanbul Yarn Fair.

On the other hand, The ETT 2018 Conference, which will be launched with the participation of textile experts, academicians, researchers, administrators, machine manufacturers and the other guests with business experience, will provide the visitors a unique symposium opportunity. It is also hoped that the conference will make important contributions to the textile industry of the future. Some of the leading names of the academic textile world whose will take part at the conference as spokesperson are as follows: Prof. Thomas Gries; Head of Textile Engineering Department at RWTH Aachen University Germany, Prof Yusuf Menceloglu; Dean of Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Sabanc University Turkey, Ph.D. Melissa Pasquinelli;Associate Department Head and Director of Graduate Programs at NC State University US and Prof Yusuf Ulcay; Chancellor of Uludag University Turkey.

ITM 2018 can rightfully boast of many firsts. The ITM team, which visited the Irantex 2017 Fair in Tehran, conducted highly-productive negotiations with the official and commercial delegations, who have planned to visit ITM 2018.

Necip Güney, Chairman of the Executive Board of the Technical Fairs, who evaluated the visitor activities and promotions in Iran, emphasised that ITM Exhibition was highly prestigious and attracted a great deal of interest in Iran. Underlining that, the most intense foreign visitor participation to ITM 2016 Exhibition was from Iran with the rate of 19 per cent, which is a demonstration of this importance.

Following Irantex, promotional activities for the visitors also continued at the CAITME 2017 11th Textile Machinery, Apparel Machinery and Technologies Exhibition held at Uzexpocentre International Expo Center in Tashkent, capital city of Uzbekistan. ITM team had talks with Uzbek authorities and commercial delegations who have promised participation in ITM 2018.

Looking at all these emerging trends, ITM organisers are optimistic that the attendance rate will increase up to three times at ITM 2018 compared to ITM 2016. Said Necip Güney: “We successfully conveyed the message of ITM to participants and visitors both with our ads placed on the billboards that dominated all roads and areas in the exhibition area and with the brochures prepared in Russian so as to present ITM 2018 to visitors.”

For the first time, a mobile application of ITM 2018 Exhibition, has also been released. Thanks to the app, which attracts attention with its design, functionality and multi-language support, the participants and visitors will able to carry all the exhibition in their pockets from exhibition layout and participant lists to the news and announcements.

The app also supports online invitation requests and application forms for participation. Users can even find their way to/in the exhibition area with the help of built-in navigation support. Besides all of these, Instagram support is among the features offered by the app.

A surprise participation is from Panama and the Panama Colon Free Trade Zone, the world’s second largest free trade zone, will take part at its booth at ITM. Manuel Grimaldo, Director General of the Panama Free Trade Zone, expressed a special interest in the ITM 2018 Exhibition, into which exhibitors and visitors from nearly 100 countries will participate. Panama, which is the fastest growing economy in South America, has 18 registered free zones. The largest of these is the Panama Colon Free Zone, the second largest free zone in the world after Hong Kong. There are nearly 3,000 companies in the Panama Colon Free Zone and 500 of these companies are operating in the field of textiles and ready-made clothing.The annual trade volume of the Panama Colon Free Zone is $20 billion.