EMO World Tour visiting Saudi-Arabia
Riyadh in Saudi Arabia is the next stopover of the EMO World Tour 2017: Already before the press conference with over 50 journalists, the first meeting with Yousef A. Alwably (left in the picture) marketing manager of the local economic development company Modon took place. Topic: Organizing a delegation trip with professional visitors from Saudi Arabia. Since the EMO Hanover is presented for the first time in Saudi Arabia, the local resonance was therefore large and leads to the expectation of numerous trade fair visitors for the EMO.
In view of the low global market prices for oil and gas, many economic indicators in the oil-producing countries have gone into reverse. The Saudi-Arabian government is aiming to counteract this trend, and has approved a new transformation programme, whose long-term goal is to reduce the nation’s dependence on fluctuating global market prices for oil and gas. The programme includes an austerity package that also affects public-sector investments, and will lead to postponements in planned or ongoing projects. It also aims to downsize subsidies and increase levies on private households. Both of these will be detrimental to consumer spending. The idea is for growth in future to be driven more significantly by investment from abroad.
The industrial sector contributes about 58 per cent to Saudi-Arabia’s economic result. It focuses primarily on processing crude oil to create refinery and petrochemical products. Many of the oil-based intermediate products, however, are suffering from low global market prices, and according to experts this is unlikely to change in the near future, which is why the remaining option is to streamline the Saudi-Arabian industrial sector for enhanced competitiveness. And for this it needs state-of-the-art production technology.
In 2015, Saudi-Arabia imported machine tools worth 236 million euros, 7 per cent of which came from Germany. This means that German manufacturers rank 5th among the major supplier nations, after the USA, Italy, China and Turkey. German machines are much in demand when it comes to high-tech or specialised solutions. In 2015, too, the German export statistics show that machines, parts and accessories worth around 28 million euro were supplied. This, however, corresponded to a fall of more than 40 per cent. In the year’s first three quarters, this decline was more than compensated for. A plus of 150 per cent to around 48 million euros was already recorded in the year’s first nine months. Deliveries consisted mainly of bending machines.
For modernising Saudi-Arabia’s industrial sector, high-tech machines are essential. “This is why representatives of Saudi-Arabia’s industrial sector need comprehensive information on new solutions for their production operations,” says Christoph Miller of the VDW. Exhibitors at the EMO Hannover 2017 will include representatives from all important vendor nations for Saudi-Arabian producers. Machine tool manufacturers from 42 different countries will there be spotlighting their production technology, ranging from simple, sturdy and affordable to high-priced high-tech. Both stand-alone machines and concatenated systems will be on show,plus transfer lines and large machines, featuring a high degree of automation. “There will be plenty to see at the EMO Hannover on the topics of Industry 4.0 and automation in particular,” says Christoph Miller. “The EMO Hannover is the ideal platform not only for big investors,” is his explicit message to Saudi-Arabian trade visitors. “We are especially keen, too, to encourage mid-tier users of machine tools to find out in detail what the world of metalworking has to offer.”
Photo: VDW