Visitor registration has opened for this year’s Automechanika Johannesburg trade fair for the automotive aftermarket, which will take place at the Expo Centre, Nasrec, from 18-21 September.
Free visitor passes are available online from www.automechaniksa.co.za
This year’s trade fair – the sixth to be staged in Johannesburg – is expected to attract more than 600 exhibitors from over 20 countries, and 12 000 visitors.
Automechanika will be co-located with two other shows: the Futuroad Expo for commercial vehicles, trucks and buses and Scalex Expo, a leading trade fair for transport systems, infrastructure, and logistics solutions. All these events will target visitors from sub-Saharan Africa. “We have a big drive to attract key buyers from around Africa and will be conducting road shows to eight key countries in Africa over the coming months. We are also pleased to announce that both the DTi and South African Tourism are offering funding for a hosted buyer programme from these countries. We encourage our exhibitors and companies who will participate at Automechanika and its co-located events to invite their clients in Africa, through this funding” Says Joshua Low, Managing Director at Messe Frankfurt South Africa.
Automechanika Johannesburg and its co-located shows will ensure that Expo Centre will be a meeting place for people involved in many different aspects of the transport and logistics industries in Southern Africa. As usual, many companies and organisations are making use of this event to stage conferences, workshops, and training sessions.
There are already 15 high-level conferences that have been confirmed to run alongside Automechanika Johannesburg and its co-located events. Some of the organisations that have already confirmed that they will be running conferences alongside Automechanika Johannesburg include the Retail Motor Industry organisation, Fuel Retailers Association, Collision Repairers Association and the RMI REMAN Cluster.
In addition, the Motor Industry Association of Zimbabwe will hold its annual conference at Expo Centre during the event. This will be the first time that this annual congress, which attracts top level buyers, will be hosted outside of Zimbabwe.
An important innovation for the 2019 edition of Automechanika Johannesburg will be a Virtual Reality Zone where visitors can experience the latest automotive repair and servicing technologies through virtual reality.
“Apart from the conferences and virtual reality zones, we will have free-to-attend workshops running in halls 5 and 6, and demo areas, where interactive and experiential content will be on offer. Some examples of this content include an international spray-painting competition, a turbo charger repair competition, among others” adds Low.
“We realise that interactive opportunities are increasingly important for visitors to trade fairs and other exhibitions worldwide, so we encourage exhibitors to make use of this strategy for their display stands at the show in September,” explains Low.
