Johannesburg -
The Futuroad Expo is set to be held at the Johannesburg Expo Centre, at Nasrec, from September 18 to 21, 2019, and a
ccording to the organisers, Messe Frankfurt South Africa, the event is already receiving strong support from the commercial vehicle industry.
This biennial event will be co-located with the sixth edition of Automechanika Johannesburg, Africa’s largest trade fair for the automotive aftermarket.
Futuroad, which is taking place for the second time in SA, is the only international trade fair of its kind to be staged on the African continent and targets a visitor audience from across Sub-Saharan Africa.
“In 2017 we started road shows into Africa to promote the event and attract visitors to the show. As a result of these, we had an 80% increase in African visitor attendance to the show, with many of our Futuroad exhibitors commenting that they made sales to this audience, during the event”, says Joshua Low, Group Exhibitions Director for Messe Frankfurt SA.
He says that based on this success, they are increasing the number of countries for our road show, from 4, to 7 countries in 2019. “These include Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana. We decided on these countries, based on preliminary feedback received from our exhibitors,” adds Low.
The first Futuroad Expo, staged in 2017, saw the launch of several new models and a number of companies are expected to use the show to expose new products next year too.
“Not only do we have a very extensive marketing campaign planned, with a research team based in the office looking for new visitor data that we can invite to the show, we are also planning some exciting experiential content and we already have the verbal commitment from SABOA (South African Bus Operators Association) and the RFA (Road Freight Association) to run conferences alongside the show. Lastly, we are planning a number of skills development workshops to help uplift the industry and broaden the appeal of the show,” Low concludes.