Advanced Engineering UK event to expand its 2012 edition

Mirroring key cornerstones of the UK government's advanced engineering and manufacturing strategy, the Advanced Engineering UK group of events has announced its next stage of growth with the introduction for 2012 of the UK Automotive Engineering show, creating a five sector synergy for next year's event.  The recent Advanced Engineering UK 2011 group of events, held at the NEC Birmingham on 9-10 November this year, saw a record attendance, nearly doubling on 2010, with a combined attendance over the two-day concentrated event, approaching 7,000 industry professionals. Including four events, each reflecting key pillars of UK government's advanced engineering priorities, the 2011 event encompassed “The continuing rapid growth in attendees and exhibitor groups around this event cluster is yet further confirmation that these are the sectors around which UK businesses and supply chains are flourishing in the high end, value added, and IP rich engineering market segments, where the UK provides world beating capability, innovation, skills and supporting academic infrastructure,” stated event organiser UK Tech Events' managing director, Ian Stone (pictured). Indeed with some 400 exhibiting companies and organisations over the combined show floor, 140+ supporting integrated expert technology and business presentations and pre-show B2B meeting setting online facilities between participating groups, the event is already established as one of the most important dates in the UK Engineering calendar for thousands of organisations. Some 2,500+ individual company and organisation locations participated at this year's event, including a record number of international attendee groups from Europe, North America & Asia. On the increasing ‘international attendance' Stone commented: “UK plc is very much alive and kicking and at its most potent in the advanced engineering and technology sectors – providing truly world class partnership in technology transfer, component, parts, systems  and equipment sourcing, together with precision engineering capability feeding into multiple advanced user industries. This event cluster is already establishing itself as ‘must attend' for international delegations keen to achieve multiple partnership and sourcing objectives with one strategic visit – this trend we expect to increase exponentially year on year as we continue our collaborations with UKTI and other leading bodies.” The recent 2011 show provided attending groups with ‘individual' show floor areas, providing diverse concentrations of industry-specific capability in aerospace engineering technologies & services, advanced composites design and manufacturing, energy industry engineering capability and the breakthrough area of printed and organic electronics. However ‘overall', the combined events provided collectively a rich diversity of unexpected opportunities to tap into relevant technology streams over the show as a whole, reflecting the overlapping nature of all of these sectors. This was reinforced by the diverse programme of parallel industry business briefings, providing ‘big picture' intelligence on the advanced engineering landscape in the UK at the same time as drilling deep into each of the individual industry sectors. Dr Neil Calder, congress director for this year's Industry Briefings programmes summed up by stating: “I saw a real thirst for the knowledge that was being transferred during both the strategic business briefings and the more tactical show floor open forum session, with many of the sessions being standing room only. These were made even more useful by the cross-sector intelligence that was being provided. We are aiming for an even sharper set of briefings and presentations for the 2012 show, providing high quality value addition to advanced engineering sector companies through this intelligence and foresight in technical and commercial fields.” Dates are already set for the 2012 Advanced Engineering UK group of events, again at NEC Birmingham on 7-8 November 2012. With an increasing take up of exhibitor space from each of the show segments plus the crucially important ‘new' addition in 2012 of the UK Automotive Engineering show, bringing together the UK's resurgent technology-driven vehicle design and manufacturing supply chains, the event is set to grow significantly yet again. www.advancedengineeringuk.com