Woodworking Machinery, Cutting Tools, Hand Tools  WoodTech Fair 2021  which is the largest meeting point of the woodworking machinery industry in the Eurasian Region, was held at TÜYAP between 9-13 October. Speaking at the opening of the fair,  Hasan Büyükdede, Deputy Minister of Industry and Technology of the Republic of Turkey, said, “The more robust, efficient and highly automated the machinery we use in all our sectors is, the more competitive you can be for the products you produce.”

The global meeting of the woodworking machinery industry, which has increased its exports by 69 percent in the last 5 years, took place. Organized by Reed TÜYAP in cooperation with the Woodworking Machinery Manufacturers’ Association (AIMSAD), the 34th WoodTech Fair for Woodworking Machines, Cutting Tools, Hand Tools, which is the largest meeting point of the industry in the Eurasian Region, opens its doors at TÜYAP Fair Center. It closed with a successful trading volume. Together with the İNTERMOB Furniture Accessories, Furniture Sub-Industry and Wood Technologies Fair, 500 direct participation, 300 foreign brand representatives and a total of 800 participants took part in the fair, with a total of over 50 thousand visitors from 110 countries, nearly 10 thousand of which were foreigners. A trade volume of 350 million TL was achieved for 5 days at the fair, which visitors from Russia, the Middle East, North Africa, Ukraine, and the Balkans showed great interest.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the fair, Hasan Büyükdede, Deputy Minister of Industry and Technology of the Republic of Turkey; “The more robust, efficient and highly automated the machinery we use in all our sectors is, the more competitive you can be for the products you produce. If we look at it from another perspective, it is inevitable that the manufacturing industry in our country will suffer a significant loss if our country cannot supply these machines or if there are disruptions in the supply chain. This is exactly why we attach great importance to the machinery industry itself and each of its sub-branches. In areas where we cannot manufacture machines, we are doing a lot of work to localize them in order to save ourselves from being machine-dependent, and we include machine-specific measures in our support programs. We support our domestic machinery manufacturers with various regulations.”

“I congratulate AIMSAD for its work”

Sharing data about the woodworking machinery sector, Hasan Büyükdede, Deputy Minister of Industry and Technology of the Republic of Turkey, continued his words as follows; “In the first six months of this year, the woodworking machinery industry, which increased its production by 38 percent and its exports by 45 percent compared to the same period of the previous year, reached 110 million dollars in 2020 exports. Our sector, which had a foreign trade surplus for the first time in 2017, had a current account surplus of 63 million dollars in 2020. We expect the sector’s performance to rise even higher this year. As the Ministry, I want you to know that we believe wholeheartedly that we will achieve this. We see that the organization in the woodworking machinery sector is at a very successful level. In this sense, I would like to congratulate our association AIMSAD, which was established in 2014 and is also a member of MAKFED, for its work. We see that AIMSAD, which has over 70 members and most of its members are manufacturers, successfully represents our country in many organizations, especially the European Woodworking Machinery Manufacturers Federation (EUMABOIS), the umbrella organization in Europe. I believe that their work will accelerate in the future.” Expressing that both sectors have high potential, Büyükdede  said ; “I also wish that both fairs will be implemented in much larger areas in the future,”.

“WoodTech acts as an important bridge for our industry”

İsmet Toktaş, Chairman of AIMSAD; “We are happy to organize the WoodTech Fair for the 34th time with your valuable participation. We are happy to be holding the WoodTech and INTERMOB Fairs, the biggest meeting point of the woodworking industry, which has had a foreign trade surplus for the last five years and broke the export record at the end of 2020, despite the Covid-19 pandemic. I sincerely believe that we will have a very successful fair this year as in previous years. WoodTech Fair, which develops and changes itself more and more every year, acts as an important bridge for our industry. In this context, Once again in front of you, I would like to thank all the Reed TÜYAP team and everyone who contributed to the organization of our fairs, especially our Ministry of Industry and Technology, who contributed greatly to the development of our sector. I hope that our fair will be beneficial”.

“We are pretty close to pre-pandemic conditions”

Ali Muharremoğlu, General Manager of Reed TÜYAP Fair Organization, continues as follows; “We are very close to the pre-pandemic conditions at the fair, where 574 brand representatives from 28 countries will be exhibited this year. We use 14 of the 14 halls at the fair, which we held on an area of ​​​​120 thousand square meters. While doing this, we say health comes first. We are holding our fair by taking all our measures in line with the instructions of the Ministry of Commerce and Health. Since 2019, our work has been continuing very intensively. As a result of these studies, we have made a very intensive promotion of our fair every year and we have been quite successful in this regard. Both of our sectors are growing every year. We can feel from the interest in our fair that the search for alternative manufacturers all over the world is very seriously directed towards Turkey. This year, we expect more than 10 thousand foreign visitors from more than 100 countries to come to our fair, and nearly 50 thousand visitors in total. In this context, we hope that all our participants will do good works.”

“Turkey is seen as an alternative to China”

Pakoy, Vice Chairman of MAKSDER ; “The Covid pandemic highlights Turkey as an alternative to China. The cancellation of some organizations in the furniture industry, like many fairs that have been cancelled recently in China, enabled the furniture purchasing committees to turn their route to Turkey. As MAKSDER, we hold online meetings with various countries from abroad in order to introduce our association and our industry to the world, and to contribute to market diversification in exports. In these meetings we held as an association, especially the South American and Southeast Asian markets openly express that they are looking for an alternative to China and that Turkey is a country that gives them confidence in this regard. In this context, with the transfer of our fair to the digital platform, the opportunity to access our fair from all over the world arose. Many companies from far and near geographies who could not attend the fair will be able to participate in the fair online, and their export markets will thus diversify.”