METAV 2020 was originally scheduled to take place from 10 to 13 March this year, but had to be postponed due to the corona virus epidemic. This made it all the more important for the organisers to find a replacement slot quickly, allowing exhibitors to plan ahead with certainty. “This was no easy matter, because the entire trade fair calendar has had to be rejigged due to the large number of exhibition cancellations and postponements,” says Schäfer. The organisers are optimistically assuming that the corona problem will be resolved by the beginning of 2021. There is also a reasonable expectation that the economy will have started to recover by next spring. The engineering industry, as one of the key customers of the machine tool sector, is expecting demand to bounce back once the corona crisis is overcome.

New METAV date: all contracts with exhibitors remain valid

“All the contracts with the roughly 460 METAV exhibitors will remain valid for the new date,” confirms VDW Executive Director Schäfer. METAV will be the most important metalworking trade fair in the first half of 2021 and will pave the way for investment decisions, especially in the German market and the Benelux countries. Franz-Xaver Bernhard, Managing Director of the long-standing METAV exhibitor Hermle AG in Gosheim, agrees: “We are expecting the economic situation to have improved significantly in a year’s time and that METAV in March 2021 will represent a good platform for meeting the reviving demand.” Hans-Jürgen Büchner, Managing Director of Iscar Germany GmbH in Ettlingen, says: “We, too, will be at METAV in 2021, because after the economic downturn in the current year, we will be using this proven platform to present ourselves to customers and to revive business.”

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