Metef 2010
The revival goes through real innovation
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More than 15,000 square meters of net exhibition space in the Garda Exhibition Centre pavilions in Brescia will be occupied by more than 500 companies from around the world. This edition will provide a rich agenda of events, meetings and business opportunities with over 20,000 international visitors. Increasingly skilled and large, the presence of professionals from around the world with a flattering confirmation of the leaders of industry and several new entry of the first magnitude of the extrusion, die casting, foundry, rolling, the finishes and surface treatments, welding branches represented at the fair.
Richer than the previous editions the expected presence of international decision-makers also thanks to more than thirty official foreign delegations accredited to the fair. Data showing the strength of an event that consolidates and holds, in spite of the crisis and the difficulties that have been afflicting the industry for months.
Thus METEF-FOUNDEQ confirms its role as a reference event for the international metals industry, a showcase of technological excellence made in Italy, with a major focus this year on the theme of innovation, a necessary step for the effective competitiveness of our industrial system.
Innovation: everybody talks about it, somebody practices it
Innovation is not only technical, it exists in every sector, but it is usually connected to technology and its possible improvements of the production processes, materials and products: this is why we talk about it more often in the industrial context, having in mind the market, the competitiveness improvement, growth, internationalization of companies and people working there. It is one thing to talk about innovation and another to implement and put it into practice; paradoxically, today the word innovation is being suggested in an almost obsessive way, almost forgetting its meaning, especially in the semi-emergency logic that has overwhelmed the industry over the past two years. The consequence is that we tend to defend against this communication overexposure, seeing innovation as a little more than an empty can which we can talk about. However, the most remarkable fact is that in reality, in Italy innovation is made a lot; fortunately we can still boast about a solid manufacturing system, toughened by generations with challenges in different sectors, in the management and control processes, in the optimal and competitive planning of the production cycles, in industry automation, energy and environmental problems, resource management and recycling. Because, as Marco Fortis said recently, Italy produces and exports real products, not subprime loans, and has the strength given by a mass of companies, mostly medium and small, with a potential that could allow us to exit the industrial crisis , together with Germany, before others; companies that live off of everyday innovation, probably outside classical patterns, but no less effective, in an ongoing confrontation with the opposition of an institutional apparatus still not prepared and sensitive, still lacking in appropriate administrative and financial support.
Thus innovation in practice will be on display at METEF by small and medium-sized companies that make up the actual market, which come into daily and direct contact with clients and the competition, which must innovate to survive, day after day inventing the most direct way to access knowledge or take advantage of opportunities. And this is real innovation, concrete and tangible: new machines for casting and extrusion, new laser welding techniques, new design systems for auto parts in light alloys as well as new techniques of recovery and recycling of metals. A few examples that suffice to give an idea of how today more than ever it is vital to fly high to reaffirm our status as a high quality industrial system, able to compete with its strengths in the international market and contribute more to the production of wealth and employment opportunities.
On the opening day of the exhibition, Wednesday 14 April at 11.00, there will be a round table entitled Innovation and research for a possible future. Representatives of institutions, associations and industry will discuss about innovation and research, which is mandatory in the current difficult economic context. The roundtable will be an important moment of reflection in the belief that at this stage of recovery expectation, the industry should question the fundamental role that, today more than ever, the innovation and research play.
Later on, the prizegiving ceremony will be held for winners announced in the first edition of the Innovation Award Metef 2010.
