When the flight touched down the Pudong Airport in Shanghai, I was ready to get surprised again by the sensational and amazing developments happening in China everyday. This time it is the World Expo 2010, attracting daily 3,00,000 visitors with pavilions of all the countries where the visitors have to wait for an entry to any pavilion for one to two hours in the serpentine queues. Again China proved that it is unstoppable.
Now, let us enter the Textile Machinery Exhibition. In total there were nine halls with 1,080 exhibitors. The total number of visitors were around 1,00,000. Indeed the exhibition reflected the present trend in the industry. You could see hope and smile on the faces of exhibitors. Of course they always have the “never say die” attitude, but once in a while you need a break to get motivated to face the future ups and downs and you could see the optimism in their faces. More than the Asians who can survive in any crisis, the Europeans were happy seeing the positive growth.
There were around 500-600 visitors from India. Quite a good number of visitors were from Pakistan, Vietnam, Egypt,Thailand and Indonesia.
A lot of enquiries were generated for machineries in the spinning sector. All Indians were happy to see LMW displaying its machinery made in China for the local market. Of course LMW machines are far superior to the China makes. But one could see that the quality of Chinese machines improved a lot. Perhaps in another five to ten years, the quality would be definitely at par with the best.
Indian visitors were interested in knowing the latest developments in technology rather than buying. The buying trend which was there in the earlier years was not there anymore after the worst crisis in the industry affected every country in 2008. Now, everyone is cautious. There were excellent displays of processing and printing machinery from European manufacturers, which attracted many. Knitting and weaving industries were represented well.
The arrangements made and services offered were world class. Indian exhibitors were also happy. All said and done, this exhibition was a great success.
The Indian textile industry is burdened with labour, power and raw material shortage. Despite a lot of hurdles, it is still having remarkable strength to recover. Every Indian who visited Shanghai was in awe and envied the way China is developing. We dream something, but the Chinese make it real every day.