Vitrum Ends with High Attendance Figures, Growing International Presence

Vitrum 2013, held October 23-26 at Rho Fiera Milano in Milan, Italy, closed last Saturday on a positive note, according to event organizers. The exhibition area of approximately 20,000 square meters was occupied by 70 percent Italian companies and a total of 349 exhibitors from 28 countries.

Attendance figures remained stable compared to 2011, with a slight fall in Italian visitors: 19,599 total were in attendance, 9,770 of which were from Italy and 9,829 from other countries. Foreign attendance was up by 0.58 percent and for the first time higher than Italian attendance, according to a report from the show’s organizers.

“We were moderately optimistic, but slightly apprehensive, now we’re moderately satisfied,” says Vitrum president Dino Fenzi. “We saw many customers from other countries. There were really a great many people. This is a must-attend event for everybody because the real market is the exhibition: it’s where different interests and competition meet, and where ideas and various experiences are exchanged. The exhibition attracts people who want to invest in updating their company and therefore buy new machinery; to do this you need to have the financial resources that are still hard to find among Italian companies.”

The synergy with Mecha-Tronika, an exhibition of electronics and information technology applied to mechanics, hosted in the pavilion next to Vitrum on the same dates was also successful, according to the report; only one registration was required to visit both shows, and this attracted 29,778 attendees.

This year’s event also featured the “Alfa Romeo Live and in Person. An Itinerary of Italian Excellence” exhibition, which brought some of the famous carmaker’s symbols from the Alfa Romeo Historical Museum in Arese, as well as its latest and already hugely popular Alfa Romeo 4C, to the glass processing exhibition for the first time.