Stone+tec 2007

[Paper Boy]

Stone+tec 2007 – the 15. International Trade Fair Natural Stone and Stoneprocessing Technology – takes place in the Exhibition Centre Nuremberg from 6-9 June 2007.

1,058 exhibitors and over 40,000 trade visitors from all over the world came to Nuremberg for Stone+tec 2005. Euroconstruct, the federation of building industry research institutes from 19 European countries, presented its forecasts for the building sector in Europe at its conference in June 2006. This survey shows that Germany with a good 198 billion EUR turnover was still the European leader in building volume in 2005, followed by Great Britain, Italy, France and Spain.

In addition, Germany's neighbours in Central Eastern Europe have attractive forecasts for the future with good growth rates and a rising share of the total European building volume. One reason for this is the demand for new buildings in line with the growth of the rest of the economy in these countries. The rest of Europe has a saturated market, in which building activity is based more on extension and maintenance of existing structures.

As in all segments, the world market for natural stone is also anything but rigid. According to the detailed market data in Dr. Carlo Montani's World Marketing Handbook STONE 2005, the competition from Asia – PR China, India and Iran – has long overtaken the classic natural stone nations in Europe in terms of raw material production. China has also meanwhile reached the top position for raw material imports. The USA holds this position for imports of finished goods. The former import world champion Germany is, however, still Europe's number one in this respect.

The NürnbergMesse project team is already working flat out on Stone+tec 2007. The demand for attractive stand spaces since the dispatch of the application documents to potential exhibitors already indicates another extremely interesting trade fair with many highlights. The deadline for late applications from companies in Germany and abroad that do not want to miss this industry get-together is 25 October 2006.