The largest Belgian meeting place for industrial maintenance and pump systems and liquid and gas equipment welcomed 5,135 visitors from forty-six countries. Visitors and exhibitors gave this edition a fantastic score of no less than 86%!
On 21 and 22 March 2018, Antwerp Expo welcomed 5,135 visitors to discover more than 340 exhibitors from different sectors. In addition, an extremely successful peripheral programme was organised that meant that Maintenance and Pumps & Valves could again be a great success.
It was the fourth time that Maintenance and Pumps & Valves were organised together at the Antwerp Expo. The event could count on quite some enthusiasm from, on the one hand, suppliers and producers and, on the other hand, visitors.
Innovative major advantage
True to tradition, organiser Easyfairs put in place a richly filled additional programme. This year, the BEMAS Digital Innovation Award was again awarded. The Aloxy start-up company, a spin-off of the University of Antwerp and Imec, took the main prize home for their modular industrial Internet of Things platform. Iristick, an Antwerp start-up, with their Iristick, Z1 smart glass for industrial maintenance and I-Care with the Wi-care condition monitoring portal were the runners-up.
The public award was again won by Endress+Hauser with IIOT Analytics, a cloud-based service. They received no less than 539 votes through an online voting system for their solution. Number two and three were Vigotec Akatherm and Rösberg Engineering, respectively.
Discovering and experiencing
To conclude, a new initiative could count on quite some enthusiasm from visitors: the Robot Demo Room. Wim Kegelaers: “Drones, Robots and Cobots are ‘hot topics’ in the maintenance world. The technology has left its infancy behind and we are about to experience a great breakthrough. And, yet, many professionals regard it as a science fiction story. This is the reason why we provided a stand where partners in the European Interreg project of BEMAS and KICMPI demonstrated the different possibilities and applications. The ideal way for many visitors to be introduced to the technology in a playful manner. This was not, of course, the only stand where something was demonstrated. On the contrary, our Digital Innovation Tour could count on more than 50 companies this year! Those who have visited Maintenance and Pumps & Valves 2018, have seen very many working applications. And now let us plan for the following editions: Maintenance 2019 is being organised on 27 and 28 March 2019 together with Worksafe 2019 and M&R 2019. You can also again come to the Antwerp Expo on 25 and 26 March 2020 for the combined Maintenance and Pumps & Valves trade shows!”
