The 12th annual Seawork International exhibition and conference was up all round.
• UP! 479 exhibitors – 10% up on last year
• UP! 7049 visitors – 8% up on last year
• UP! 789 overseas visitors – 11.2% up on last year
Overseas visitors showed a strong increase and were enhanced by naval attachés from South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Chile. Captain Oscar Vargas, Head of the Chilean Naval mission was so impressed with his first visit to Seawork that he intends to return next year with members of his London team.
The international ‘meet the buyer’ feature, organised by the UK Trade & Investment, was a great success for both Seawork exhibitors and visitors, bringing together key decision makers from major overseas companies to meet potential suppliers and develop commercial relationships. Buyers from Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, France, Greece, India, Italy, Netherlands, Panama and Romania participated using a suite of interview rooms specially built on-site.
There was a full programme for the 3-day conference and the Annual General Meeting of the UK Harbour Masters’ Association, together totalling some 500 delegates.
Seawork Innovations Showcase Winners
Once again, the Innovations Showcase brought together outstanding examples of innovative engineering and creative development; the worthy winner of the Spirit of Innovation Trophy was KPM De Ltd of Stratford on Avon for the Dry Run Pumping System, which can operate for up to 24 hours without water.
Within hours of the result being announced, KPM were receiving enquiries from the USA, with their distributor passing an email from one happy customer: “I read the testimonials from the British military who repeated the cycle of running the pump for 10 minutes dry and 10 minutes wet for three day with no pump failures. Now I can be just as confident as the military and coast guard!”
The day after receiving the trophy, Sales Director Peter Norman commented: “The stand has been busy all day, media interest has even included an interview with the Daily Birmingham Post, who are impressed by our policy of depending on local sources for all the major components of our Dry Run Pumping System – it’s how made in Birmingham became known and respected around the world.”
Category award winners were OMC in the Civil Engineering category for their In-Transit Real Time Dynamic Under-Keel Clearance System; Scottlamp in the Safety & Training category for their SOLAS approved SeaSpark automatic LED lifejacket lights and Chameleon in the Vessel Design & Construction category.
Read the full feature report.