23 April 2012
More than 20,000 visitors attended the UK’s biggest machine tool exhibition which this year celebrates its 100th anniversary
With the last visitor leaving the NEC Birmingham on Friday evening, MACH 2012 is now officially over and what an exhibition it was.
Over the five days (April 16-20), well over 20,000 people flooded through the doors including some 2,500 young people, many led on tours around the exhibition by apprentices from member companies.
The Rt Hon Dr Vince Cable MP, toured MACH on the Thursday and met with a host of companies to discuss how to build upon the sector’s strengths.
Simon Pollard, President of the Manufacturing Technologies Association, who organise MACH, said: “MACH is Britain’s biggest exhibition of manufacturing technology. It lies at the heart of an incredible range of UK supply chains. It is vital as it allows people to come together, make contacts, do business and show off the worldclass technologies and applications that make our industry so dynamic”.
Charlotte Careswell, NEC Account Manager for MACH, said: “We’re delighted to see another successful MACH exhibition here in Birmingham. This year the show celebrates its 100th anniversary, first opening its doors in October 1912 at Olympia. It moved to the NEC in 1976 and was the second show to be hosted at the venue - we’re very proud to have helped the organisers progress the show to what it is today.”
Carl Windram, Managing Director of engineering firm Central Grinding Services, of Oadby, Leicester, said: “We had a great show with a huge amount of enquiries, so much so that we are looking to buy another machine so we can fulfil potential orders. MACH has helped us to step up our operations and move our business onto the next level.”
Nick Frampton, Mills CNC’s Managing Director, said: ‘We have had a very positive MACH show. By the close of play on the last day we had sold 14 machines from the stand (over £1.8M sales), up 50% on the sales performance we achieved during the last MACH show. A significant percentage of these orders have come from new customers...which is particularly pleasing and demonstrates the pulling power of the Mills: Doosan offering.
‘In addition, we have taken a record-high number of serious sales enquiries which, I am confident, will be converted into actual orders in the next 4 – 8 weeks. The decision to take 16 machines to MACH and exhibit from the largest stand we’ve ever had at the show has been more than vindicated.’
Organised by the MTA and sponsored this year by Lloyds TSB Commercial, MACH is the UK’s biggest exhibition dedicated to advanced and precision manufacturing technologies and takes place every two years. MACH 2012 featured some 490 exhibitors and some 5,000 tonnes of working machinery.
The next MACH will take place between 7-11 April 2014.