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EXHIBITIONS
The Tire Cologne Goes Head-to-Head with Autopromotec
When it eventually came, the postponement of The Tire Cologne came as no surprise. Indeed, by the time Koelnmesse announced the postponement on March 18, pressure had been mounting on the organisers for a number of days. The withdrawal of Michelin on March 11, followed by that of Cooper and Toyo six days later combined with the decision made by the regional government of North Rhine-Westphalia to restrict large gatherings and a similar decision by the City of Cologne to advise the cancellation of all trade fairs during the period for which the show had been scheduled, made the postponement all but inevitable.
No-one can have an issue with this at all. The global trade show and conference calendar has
been decimated, with everything before September falling by the wayside. Indeed, the organisers of those exhibitions originally scheduled for September, such as Automechanika (8-12 September) and the IAA Commercial Vehicle Show in Hannover (24-30 September) must also be concerned as to whether their shows will be able to proceed as planned.
In the tyre sector, most of those shows originally planned for the first few months of the year have been rescheduled – Tyrexpo Africa for 4-6 August, Pneushow in Brazil until 23-25 September, and the Latin American Tyre Expo in Panama, somewhat more sensibly, until 17-20 November. Koelnmesse, however, rather than postpone The Tire Cologne until later this year, chose 18-21 May,
2021 for their rescheduled event, a week before Autopromotec in Bologna.
This move elicited an immediate response from Autopromotec CEO, Renzo Servadei, who said; "Autopromotec will take place in Bologna from 26th to 29th May 2021, The Tire Cologne postponed its exhibition to 2021, rescheduling it in dates very close to our event. This does sadden us but does not frighten us. It does not frighten us because, through our associations AIRP – Italian tyre retreaders and AICA – Italian garage equipment manufacturers,
internationally.
"This saddens us because we are experiencing an unprecedented mass emergency, and this should be a moment to be united and not to fight. Our colleagues from Cologne have instead preferred competitive practices that will force many exhibitors to make a choice. Instead, in our business as in any other trade fair sector, we need to commit ourselves to initiate collaborative strategies in order to align all the initiatives in the interest of the Companies. "Autopromotec has a solid network of international partners with which it is already
Autopromotec is in practice property of the exhibitors, exhibitors that represent the absolute excellence of the sector,
cooperating to make sure that trade fairs can become, as soon as this emergency will come to an end, valuable tools to
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