Valencia, Spain, February 9, 2006--Spain’s ceramic tile industry is the star of the 2006 Cevisama trade fair in Valencia, February 7-11.
140 Spanish manufacturers are showing off their new products for 2006 at the exhibition, which was opened officially by the Prince and the Princess of Asturias. As well as exhibitors of coverings for construction, plumbing, bathroom fittings, raw materials, glazes and frits, this year’s show also includes manufacturers of machinery for the ceramic tile industry.
The event takes up over 93,000 square meters of exhibition space in the revamped Feria Valencia exhibition complex. One of the largest venues in Europe, it offers a range of services to exhibitors and visitors as well as the facilities of a first rate exhibition center. The ceramic tile trade, indisputably the star of the show, is located on Levels 2 and 3 of Pavilions 1, 2, 3 and 4.
90,029 visitors flocked to Cevisama in 2005, with 11,140 foreign buyers--12.3% of the total and the exhibition’s main target audience--attending. This number is expected to be even higher this year, reflecting the growing appeal of the products on show. The last time the event included machinery, in 2004, 86,566 visitors attended.
An attractive programme of parallel and promotional events, ASCER and ICEX are again putting a promotional package together as part of their mission to establish the "Tile of Spain” brand in markets where no promotional plan is being rolled out and to achieve recognition for Spanish products amongst importers, distributors and journalists. The main feature of the package is a visit to the exhibition for a select group of invited trade journalists and opinion leaders from a number of different countries.
Some 100 professionals are attending as guests this year from the USA, Germany, France, the UK, Italy, the Russian Federation, Romania, Australia and the Ukraine. Ceramic floor and wall tiles are offering more and more solutions, engaging the interest of more and more people in the world of architecture. Little surprise, then, that of the journalists being invited to CEVISAMA this year a significant number are from architectural journals.
Press trips to the exhibition have been highly successful in improving journalists’ knowledge and understanding of the Spanish ceramic tile industry. It has therefore been decided that these trips should be the major item in the program of promotional activities aimed at the foreign media.
As usual, ASCER’s Press Conference was be held on Wednesday morning. Topline figures for the Spanish tile industry were be revealed, along with this year’s projects. The award ceremony for the IVth Tile of Spain Awards took place after addresses by ASCER’s president Fernando Diago and vice-presidents Carlos Cabrera and Joaquín Piñón. The competition included categories for Architecture, Interior Design, Degree Projects and Journalism.
Over the four years the competition has been run, the Tile of Spain prizes have become well known and gained prestige, thanks to the quality of the winning projects and the increasingly high profile of the members of the jury. The winner of the prize in the Architecture category this year was the unusual, emblematic Spanish Pavilion at the Aichi Expo by Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Farshid Moussavi. An exhibition of photographs of the winning entries will be staged within Trans/Hitos 2006.
