Busy halls and a great atmosphere

Achema 2015

Busy halls and a great atmosphere

By June 19 it was all over! Achema 2015 closed its doors for the last time. Yet what remains at the end of five action-packed days? Memories of busy halls and the crowds of satisfied faces – on exhibitors and visitors alike. And the knowledge that Achema has once again lived up to its reputation as the global innovation summit for the process industry.

At Achema information sharing goes beyond the RPM of a pump or the speed of a packaging line. “We talk about sustainability. We talk about energy, resources and water. We talk about highly flexible production solutions. In other words we talk about life and work in tomorrow’s world“, said Professor Rainer Diercks, Chairman of the Board of Dechema e.V., during the Achema opening session. And that is precisely why this event beneath the trade fair tower in Frankfurt is more than just a simple exhibition for process engineering; it’s an international showcase for future technologies that can help solve tomorrow’s challenges. This ambitious goal was also reflected in the event’s three focal themes: BiobasedWorld, Industrial Water Management and Process Analytical Technology.

All in all, 166 444 trade visitors from around the world made their way to the Frankfurt exhibition grounds compared to 166 447 in 2012. There’ll be plenty of work for the 3813 exhibitors’ sales organisations in the weeks ahead following up on new leads, responding to enquiries and setting orders in motion.

Dr. Thomas Scheuring, CEO of Dechema Ausstellungs-GmbH, simultaneously noticed a change in visitor behaviour: ”We’ve reached a turning point. Visitors came to the exhibition grounds on more than one day. They had specific interests and they took all the time they needed to gather a large volume of information.“ According to the organisers, the proportion of international visitors rose by a significant margin. The same applies to exhibitors: for the first time, more than half of them (53.9 %) came from outside Germany.

133 436 m2 of exhibition space were divided up between 11 exhibitor groups. Growth was particularly noticeable in the pharmaceutical, packaging and warehouse logistics industries, which booked additional space this year, as well as in the instrumentation and process control category. This latter group benefited from the unmistakable tendency in the process industry to further increase the level of automation as well as from what is probably the biggest issue of all today: Industry 4.0. Equipment manufacturing along with lab and analysis systems, however, showed a slight decline.

The Achema Start-Up Award honours outstanding ideas and young entrepreneurs in the chemical, processing and biotech industries. The aim of the individual awards, worth 10 000 euros, is to provide support during the development of a business plan which addresses pressing future challenges. The awards ceremony took place within the Achema opening session on June 15. Three winners were announced: Volterion, 4Gene and Ionera. In the Energy category, Volterion prevailed with a novel concept for home energy storage. The company manufactures and sells small-format vanadium redox flow batteries for de-centralised storage of solar energy in private homes. “Fragrance on demand“ is the philosophy of 4Gene, which came out top in the Industrial Biotechnology category. 4Gene develops, produces and markets natural, biotechnologically engineered, activatable aroma glycosides. Ionera, winner in the Measurement and Analytical Techniques category, has developed a platform technology for analysing anything from single molecules to DNA with nanopores.

The team from cpp, cav, dei, Pharmaproduktion and prozesstechnik-online.de were also in attendance in Frankfurt, of course. Press conferences, “near real-time reporting“ on www.prozesstechnik-online.de and visits to customers and authors around the Achema halls took up the best part of the editors’ exhibition week. After a hard day’s work, visitors then had a chance to relax with a planter’s punch, mojito, swimming pool or tequila sunrise at the mobile bar which opened at the cav stand in Hall 5.1 at 3 p.m. Numerous thirsty guests enjoyed a refreshing cocktail – which the barkeeper garnished them with a few entertaining acrobatics. The happy hour in the late afternoon contributed to a congenial atmosphere in which networking and informal chats could thrive.

Become a cav cover star – this was the motto of a fun photo stunt at the Konradin booth. This particularly popular attraction was sponsored by 3M, Grundfos, HTT, Lutz, Wika and Wolftechnik.

Our professional photographer set up a small studio in which to put business leaders, chemical and process engineers, marketing staff, students and schoolchildren under the spotlight and turn them into real cover stars. At the end of the photo shoot, all of these budding models were able to take their personal cover photo home with them. The result is a colourful collection of amazingly varied portraits that are a lot of fun to look at. Have we succeeded in arousing your curiosity? If so, why not take a look at the photographs on our website at www.prozesstechnik-online.de/cavtitelstar?

www.cpp-net.com search: cpp0315dechema

Lukas Lehmann

Assistant Editor-in-Chief

cpp chemical plants + processing