Technology is strongest segment at Brau Beviale

GERMAN beverage machinery production maintained its leading role in the world market during the financial and economic crisis and has grown appreciably again in 2010 and in the course of this year so far. At Brau Beviale – from 9–11 November 2011 in the Exhibition Centre Nuremberg – this innovative sector forms the core of the technology product segment with about one-third of the total of 1,300 exhibitors. Together with the product segments of beverage raw materials, logistics and marketing, the world's most important capital goods exhibition for the beverage industry this year expects 32,000 trade visitors.

High quality beverage raw materials, such as malt from Belgium

Brau Beviale 2011 is the world's most important capital goods exhibition for the beverage industry this year. A good 1,300 exhibitors (2010: 41% international) present a comprehensive spectrum of high-quality beverage raw materials, innovative technologies, efficient logistics and even marketing solutions. About 30% of the trade visitors will come from outside Germany.

In 2010, more than three-quarters of the exhibitors had visitors from breweries, 42 % (multiple answers) were pleased about the interest shown by carbonated drink producers, followed by mineral water fillers (37 %) and fruit juice producers (34 %). The popular exhibition mix of professional presentation and personal contact convinces with features such as manageable cost of exhibiting, highly efficient, information-packed and concentrated three days of exhibiting, comprehensive range of products, intensive personal dialogue with decision-makers, and ideal date.

Beverage machinery production growing again

The German Food Processing and Packaging Machinery Association (Fachverband Nahrungsmittelmaschinen and Verpackungsmaschinen) within the German Engineering Federation (VDMA, Verband Deutscher Maschinen-und Anlagenbau) estimates that the world market for packaging machinery, including beverage packaging machinery, recovered from 20.7 to some 24 billion euros last year. Germany holds the largest share of this volume with a good 20 %, ahead of Italy, Japan, the USA and China. The People's Republic of China was also the major export country for German packaging machinery last year.

Orders received for packaging machinery also carried on rising in the first quarter of 2011. The VDMA association therefore expects about 11% more sales for the whole of 2011.

Brewers remain the dominant trade visitors

In 2010, production volume of packaging machinery increased by 7.4 % to €4.75 billion. The beverage packaging machinery segment contributed a disproportionately large share of this with almost 15% more. The production volume here rose to €1.55 billion. In the beverage production machinery segment, which is strongly marked by large projects including new brewhouse buildings, the production volume of €334 million in 2010 remained about the same as the previous year's level.

Overall, the beverage machinery segment comprising essentially around 100 manufacturers with 14,000 employees achieved a production volume of some €1.9 billion in the past year. This figure does not include machinery for plastic containers, such as stretch blow moulding machines. These are assigned to plastic machinery for statistical purposes. As PET is the most widely used material in the world for drink containers and beverage machinery components like fittings and pumps are also statistically accounted for elsewhere, beverage machinery sales are probably about twice as hiNike