The first and last days of the fair were particularly quiet, although most machinery companies did report serious interest and some new orders for equipment during the four-day show. The machinery exhibitors this year saw the return of the Mercier Freres and Turner names, which are both now under new ownership. For more details on the new Turner company.
Mercier Freres are now a division of Flli Bisson SpA and have been in production since March of this year. In addition to the name, Bisson purchased the rights to the new generation of splitting machines from the auctioneers of the old Mercier Turner organisation. Bisson describe themselves as mechanical carpentry constructors for the engineering industry, specialising in welded structures. They have been in existence for 36 years and are ISO 9002 accredited.
Dornbusch, Germany, who celebrated their 100th anniversary in 2000, said they had been kept busy right up to the middle of the last day. Like most of the exhibitors, their expectations in light of the current economic and political uncertainties had been very low. Their embossing rollers and plates are much in demand and they hold 35,000 designs including an abstract/geometric design for the Smart car. They also work with Mercedes, BMW and Volvo.
These sentiments were echoed by Ulf Rainer Bogdawa of NBN Automação Industrial, Brazil, who is also president of Abrameq, the Brazilian equipment manufacturers Association. He said that all the bad news in the previous weeks meant that exhibitors arrived with extremely low expectations. However, those visitors that came were more serious and directed towards doing business.
The chemical hall (hall 34) remained the busiest and most lively during the show and many companies reported reasonable amounts of business.
Among the machinery exhibitors, very few new machines were evident, although GeMaTa did launch their new Jumbo Universal syncro, full hide, rollercoating machine.
However, many of the major producers were highlighting machinery which had been re-designed or modified to become more effective in the tannery. Here Leather International provides a pictorial summary of some of the new or modified machines on display at the show this year. An in-depth technical review of the latest tannery machinery can be seen next month.
