The Sunday News
THE Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) Company is looking forward to luring more foreign exhibitors for the Mine Entra exhibition, as it seeks to continue fostering trade linkages between local companies and those from outside.
Statistics from the company showed that this year’s exhibition, which ended on Friday, attracted a total of 218 exhibitors compared to last year’s 239.
Of these 35 were foreign and 183 were local with direct exhibitors numbering 174 (159 local and 15 foreign) while 44 (24 local and 20 foreign) indirect exhibitors were recorded.
This year’s mining, engineering and transport expo recorded 67 new exhibitors.
However, of interest in this year’s show was the increase in foreign countries participating at the exhibition with companies from South Africa, Germany, China, Belgium, Nigeria and Botswana taking part.
ZITF Company chairman, Mr Bekithemba Nkomo, said on Friday they were now working towards increasing the number of foreign exhibitors to enable Mine Entra to claim its status of being an internationally recognised mining, engineering and transport expo.
“We are positive that we will have an increase in foreign participation. We have got agents all over the world selling Mine Entra on our behalf and we look forward to strengthening them by giving them some more and better support.
“We will look at probably adding one or more agents to try and sell more of Mine Entra space (internationally) and we hope that the countries that we have been covering so far will be able to come back and we try and get some more countries,” Mr Nkomo said.
ZITF Company has agents in most countries where Zimbabwe has trade attachés.
He said most exhibitors confirmed that they would take part in next year’s exhibition after receiving overwhelming inquiries and business deals from this year’s showcase.
“One German exhibitor, visiting Zimbabwe for the first time on an exploratory mission said he was impressed with the state-of-the-art equipment he has seen at the exhibition which he says has made him keen to return and do more business. He said he has had promising conversations with local players that he would like to pursue after the show.
“A third time local exhibitor said he had received a number of inquiries from players in the mining industry and that there were potential deals in the pipeline. Preliminary survey results show that most exhibitors were happy with Mine Entra 2014 and will participate in next year’s edition. At the end of business yesterday (last Thursday), we had recorded 2 057 business visitors who came to the expo. Last year we had 2 558 over the three days,” Mr Nkomo said.
A number of exhibitors interviewed by Sunday Business said taking part at this year’s exhibition had been worthwhile as they managed to get a number of inquiries as well as broking potential business deals.
“We received overwhelming inquiries and we are definitely going to follow up most of them soon after the exhibition as we believe we might get some business out of them. A number of people that visited our stand seemed to be interested in our Corrugated & IBR sheets,” said Steel Base sales representative, Mr Lovemore Mhlanga.
Steel Base specialises in the manufacture and supply of iron and steel products for the construction, engineering and mining sectors.
It has five branches in the country with two in Harare while others are in Bulawayo, Kadoma, Mutare and Masvingo. One of the country’s leading electrical components manufacturers and engineering firms Leaford Electric Rewinds’ technical director, Mr Orphan Bhiza, said although the company did not receive much inquiries than last year there was still hope to clinch deals from inquiries made.
“We didn’t get as much inquiries as the ones we got last year but since most of them were new contacts we are hoping to follow them up. Most mining houses were mostly interested in our power transformers and industrial welding machines,” Mr Bhiza said.
The annual event, which is organised by the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) Company, started on Wednesday and ended on Friday.
It ran under the theme: “Innovation, Beneficiation, Growth”
