Messe Berlin has rescheduled the InnoTrans 2020 trade fair, the biggest event in the rail industry calendar. The venue has more than 3 kilometer of outdoor tracks for rail vehicles to be displayed.
InnoTrans 2020 was to have been held on September 22-25, 2020, but as part of measures to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, the Berlin senate issued a decree on April 21 banning events with more than 5,000 people from being held in the city before October 24, 2020. InnoTrans 2018 had attracted 3,062 exhibitors from 61 countries, and 153,421 trade visitors from 149 countries.
‘We are already finalising an alternative event date and will announce it in early May’, a Messe Berlin spokesperson told Railway Gazette International on April 22, adding that the new date would be in ‘springtime 2021’. The rescheduled InnoTrans railway and transport trade fair will now take place from April 27 to 30 2021.
Following the rescheduled event in April 2021, Messe Berlin says InnoTrans will revert to its original pattern of being held in even-numbered years. The following event would therefore take place in September 2022 as planned.
‘The health and safety of exhibitors, trade visitors and all the employees at the trade fair have the utmost priority’, said InnoTrans director Kerstin Schulz. ‘We would like to take this opportunity to thank our exhibitors for their co-operation and loyalty’.
Welcoming the announcement, the Chief Executive of the German rail industry association VDB Dr Ben Möbius said that postponing the trade fair had been ‘a painful but absolutely right decision’.
He predicted that the revised date would ‘create new perspectives for the economic re-start’, adding that ‘climate-friendly mobility, digital mobility and networked mobility will remain central challenges, even after the crisis. Realising the Clean Mobility of the Future together with partners all over the world remains our mission and that is what InnoTrans 2021 will be all about’.
MIKE OCHONMA
