XPO Exhibitions Ltd (XPO) has announced exciting new plans for its recently acquired trade events, Material Handling & Logistics (MHL) and The National Safety Show (NSS).
As recently as 2013 these two ‘trade only’ events have always run concurrently at the ASB Showgrounds in Auckland. They will now run alongside and in conjunction with two of XPO’s most successful and longest running trade events: Foodtech Packtech for MHL and buildnz | designex for The National Safety Show (NSS), respectively. The first to be launched will be The National Safety Show, which will be co-located with buildnz | designex (21-23 June 2015) at ASB Showgrounds.
“We are excited to be in a position to rejuvenate and grow this event and aligning it to the award-winning buildnz |designex event makes a lot of sense. Workplace health and safety is important to any business and particularly so in the building and construction industry,” says MD of XPO, Brent Spillane.
The MHL exhibition will co-locate with Foodtech Packtech (FTPT), with a full launch being planned in October 2016. However, recent MHL exhibitors will also have an opportunity to be a part of FTPT 2014, scheduled for 23-25 September this year. FTPT 2014 is nearly sold out, but organisers XPO have allocated some limited space for MHL exhibitors to be present. MHL exhibitors, who will be on hand to showcase their products, new equipment, services and innovations around materials handling, supply chain, transport and logistics industries – will do so in front of a far larger national audience of food industry trade visitors. “There has historically been a complementary audience between FTPT and MHL resulting in crossovers that will work to both exhibitors’ and visitors’ advantage. Exhibitors will reach a far greater pool of quality visitors and potential customers. Visitors will have greater value in seeing everything under one roof,” says Spillane.
XPO is investing heavily into marketing and promotional programmes for each of these events. XPO has a growing database containing more than 200,000 unique (mostly SME) business visitors who have registered to attend their shows in the past four years. This database holds the industry profile, number of employees, buying power, product interest and geographic profile of each visitor, representing an incredibly powerful marketing tool to invite to our leading business events. Combine that with other DM, online, print and radio activity, as well as media and corporate partners’ leveraging, XPO is confident that these events will only go from strength to strength.
XPO Exhibitions was established in New Zealand 2010 by the Spillane family when they purchased the nation’s largest Trade Exhibitions portfolio from DMG World Media NZ ltd (part of the Daily Mail Group UK). Those events include three annual NZ Gift & Homeware Fairs, EMEX, Foodtech Packtech, buildnz and designex. The Spillane family have been intimately involved with the NZ Gift & Homeware Fairs since their inception in the early eighties. In September 2013 XPO acquired the full trade exhibition portfolio of Hayley Media, including The National Safety Show, the MHL (Materials Handling & Logistics) Show, SouthMACH and the South Island Hospitality Show.
