Milan to Host Bigger and Better EMO 2009

Italy's Milan will once again host EMO Milano, a top machine tool exhibition and a main event for operators in the international manufacturing industry, on October 5-10 this year. The announcement of the upcoming event was made by Davide Orsenigo, the Asian area manager of the marketing directorate of the Italian Association of Manufacturers of Machine Tools, Robots, Automation and Auxiliary Products (UCIMU-SISTEMI PER PRODURRE), at a press conference in Taipei during last month's 2009 Taipei International Machine Tool Show.

EMO Milano is organized by EFIM-ENTE FIERE ITALIANE MACCHINE, a company which is partly owned by UCIMU-SISTEMI PER PRODURRE. The show will occupy the entire 180,000 square meters of the Milan Exhibition Center and is expected to attract more than 200,000 visitors from every part of the world.

Initiated in 1975, EMO is held every two years, alternately in Milan and Hanover, Germany, and documents the evolution of the 'world of metalworking' by promoting increasingly advanced technical solutions through comparisons and meetings between manufacturers and users. It provides the best possible qualitative synthesis of the solutions offered by the worldwide machine tool industry.

Meetings and comparisons involving production machinery manufacturers are held in Milan every six years (the latest one there was in 2003) during the EMO show.

The most spectacular innovation for this year's show is the brand-new Milan Exhibition Centre which, thanks to its impressive and functional structures, guarantees every comfort for exhibitors and visitors to ensure a marvelous experience at the exhibition, said Orsenigo.

The most recent Milanese edition of the exhibition (EMO Milano 2003) attracted more than 155,000 visitors, 60,000 traveling to Italy from 104 nations around the world: Europe (80.5%), Asia (13.5%), the Americas (4.5%), Africa (1%), and Oceania (1%).

Exhibits at the show will include metal-forming and metal-cutting machine tools, welding machines, heat-treatment equipment, surface-treatment equipment, industrial robots, automation hardware and software, assembly systems, tools parts, components, accessories, metrology, quality control systems, and systems for safety and environmental production equipment, among other products.

In a speech at the EMO Milano press conference in Taipei, Alan K.T. Lu said that as of the end of February, Taiwan was one of the top-three prospective exhibitors with over 100 local firms having already booked exhibition space there. Lu is chairman of the machine tool committee under the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry as well as chairman of Kent Industrial Co., one of Taiwan's top-tier manufacturers of CNC grinding machines and machining centers.

Lu noted that Taiwan was the world's fourth-largest exporter and fifth-largest producer of machine tools in 2008. The island was also the seventh-largest market in terms of value, behind only mainland China, Germany, the Untied States, Italy, Japan and South Korea.

"A lot of manufacturers of machine tools and related accessories in Taiwan have built up a lot of experience with EMO over the past decades," Lu commented. "Some say that they see EMO as a must-go event, because they want to absorb the world's most advanced manufacturing technologies and gain insights into the newest market trends."