Successful launch of BIOTECHNICA/LABVOLUTION dual exhibition

- Attending professionals delighted with special “smartLAB” display
- Digitization and “biologization” spark lively discussion
- New spring timeslot: Next dual event to run from 16 to 18 May 2017

The producers of the BIOTECHNICA and LABVOLUTION dual exhibition drew positive conclusions at the close of the event on Thursday, 8 October. Some 10,000 trade visitors traveled to Hannover to take advantage of the business opportunities offered by BIOTECHNICA as the European networking hub for bio¬technology and life sciences and the first-ever LABVOLUTION (the World of Lab Technology), thus making the inaugural staging of this dual event a solid success. The new LABVOLUTION showcased lab technology for customers from the chemicals and pharmaceuticals industry as well as from environmental engineering, quality assurance and the food industry, while BIOTECHNICA remains focused on biotechnology and the life sciences. The next such double-header exhibition is scheduled for 16 to 18 May 2017.

“Our strategy of jointly staging LABVOLUTION and BIOTECHNICA has paid off,” reported Dr. Jochen Köckler, Member of the Managing Board at Deutsche Messe. “With LABVOLUTION putting the focus squarely on lab technology, we are now giving this high-interest topic even stronger coverage, while at the same time attracting new business sectors to the show. This is a logical extension of the established BIOTECHNICA format, which has served as a central networking hub and magnet for the biotech industry.” The debut edition of LABVOLUTION drew more than 100 exhibitors to Hannover – over 40 percent of them from abroad.

Special highlights: smartLAB and BIOTECHNICA Plaza

The hottest topic at the three-day event was digitization and its consequences. Accordingly, the biggest visitor magnet proved to be the special display entitled “smartLAB – the intelligent lab of the future” staged within the LABVOLUTION fair. The fully integrated smartLAB demonstrated how the use of software, automation, robotics, augmented reality, wearables and big data are set to change everyday lab routines across a wide variety of applications. “The innovative smartLAB showcase revealed the opportunities and potential inherent in LABVOLUTION,” commented Köckler. “This new trade fair will be back again next season, providing an international hub for networking and debate on the future of the lab.” 12 partners from industrial enterprises as well as from the R&D community teamed up in the staging of smartLAB, and trade visitors rewarded their efforts by taking extensive advantage of the chance to explore and debate the future of the laboratory in a series of smartLAB forum talks.

Among the highlights at BIOTECHNICA was the new BIOTECHNICA Plaza, which served as a central hub for knowledge transfer and networking – both high on the agenda for future editions of BIOTECHNICA, as well. The BIOTECHNICA Plaza featured a new approach: It addressed all of the show’s overarching themes at a single location and offered conferences geared specifically to the key topics of the bio-economy, personalized medical technologies and – for the first time so prominently featured – Bio-IT. The new, free-of-charge BIOTECHNICA Partnering tool offered in cooperation with the EBD Group was also well received, with some 200 exhibitors and visitors taking advantage of BIOTECHNICA and LABVOLUTION to schedule meetings and generate new leads.

Attendees even more international, and of even higher caliber

With attendance by some 10,000 professionals, the 2015 event was on a par with its previous showing, with a somewhat higher percentage of visitors coming from outside of Germany. The event drew a greater number of visitors not only from other EU countries, but also from North America and Asia. A visitor survey revealed that of all German trade visitors, just under half came from northern Germany. BIOTECHNICA/LABVOLUTION 2015 was also found to have attracted a greater percentage of high-level executives, with one out of every four trade visitors playing leading roles in their organizations. Substantially more than half of all visitors had either top or shared responsibility for purchasing or procurement decisions. According to the visitor survey, the overwhelming majority of visitors were satisfied with the event, with over 80 percent rating it as either very good or good.

The Hannover event featured key companies like Analytic Jena, the IBM-owned Aspera, Bruker Optics, Büchi Labortechnik, Carl Zeiss Microscopy, Ewald Innovationstechnik, Eppendorf, GE Healthcare, Hamilton Robotics, Merck Millipore, Mettler Toledo, Sarstedt, Tecan, Testo and Qiagen. The special smartLAB display was staged with contributions by the likes of Eppendorf, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation, Merck, Köttermann, Sartorius, Stäubli Robotics and the Institute of Technical Chemistry at the Leibniz University of Hannover. A highlight at the event consisted of the presentation of the EUROPEAN BIOTECHNICA AWARD to the Swiss-based firm Molecular Partners AG during the BIOTECHNICA/LABVOLUTION reception on the first night of the show.

ELA satisfied with attendance figures

The European Lab Automation Conference (ELA) also gave positive ratings to the event. Produced by British-based SELECTBIO, ELA – Europe’s biggest event featuring automation in the life sciences – took place congruently with BIOTECHNICA and LABVOLUTION in Hannover. Some 200 conference attendees convened at the on-site Convention Center to discuss topics like Laboratory Automation and Robotics, Genome Engineering and Personalized Medicine.

The date for the next dual BIOTECHNICA/LABVOLUTION exhibition is set for 16 to 18 May 2017. Deutsche Messe had announced the change in schedule from autumn to spring in the run-up to the current event. The show’s biennial rhythm remains unchanged. The new timeslot is not only more convenient for many firms in the sector, helping them to better orchestrate their sales campaigns for the business year, but also does justice to the high concentration of scientific congresses and related events in the fall months, thus making it far easier for members of the scientific and R&D community to attend. This all adds up to ideal conditions for the future of northern Europe’s unparalleled double-header trade fair for lab technology and bioengineering.