parts2clean 2023: First-rate contacts, new projects and concrete deals

Cleanliness is playing an increasingly important role in a growing number of industrial sectors. This conclusion can be drawn after the close of the 20^th parts2clean, made clear by the tasks and projects which more than 3,000 visitors brought with them to the Stuttgart Exhibition Center from 26-28 September. The share of foreign visitors was 20 percent, with the strongest attendance coming from Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Austria and the Netherlands.

The highlight theme of “High Purity”, which was added to the core areas of this, the leading international trade fair for industrial parts and surface cleaning, made a major contribution to the substantial increase of around 33 percent compared to the previous year. “In this way, we have placed a stronger focus on the range of solutions offered at parts2clean for tasks where the highest cleanliness requirements need to be met,” reports Christoph Nowak, Project Director at Deutsche Messe, “and we have thus succeeded in attracting more visitors from the affected industries to parts2clean.” This was confirmed by Dr.-Ing. Günther Schmauz, board member at acp systems AG: “With our high-purity snow blasting cleaning solutions, we were previously more of a niche supplier at parts2clean. At this year’s event, however, we were able to welcome a large number of trade fair guests from the fields of EUV lithography, including system partners and suppliers, as well as electromobility. The latter ranges from battery manufacturers and suppliers of components for power dissipation and energy management right through to electric motors. For us, parts2clean 2023 went very well.” Jan Gerbrands, CEO at Netherlands-based Brookhuis Applied Data Intelligence B. V., a manufacturer of products for optimizing cleanroom operations, expressed similar sentiments: “It was a fantastic show for us, as we were able to generate many new contacts.” And, according to Rainer Straub, Board of Management and Vice President Sales & Customer Service at Ecoclean GmbH: “parts2clean was significantly more successful for us this year than in 2022, certainly due to the highlight theme of ‘High Purity’, which is a focal point in our program at Ecoclean. This helped us to attract new visitors.”

Decision-minded trade visitors looking to invest

A total of over 150 exhibitors from 14 countries presented new, refined and time-tested products as well as services for industrial parts and surface cleaning on around 4,500 square meters of display space. The fact that most of them were able to hold highly detailed discussions about specific projects was due to the above-average percentage of trade visitors (99 percent). About 88% of them were involved in operational investment decisions, and about 78% visited the trade fair looking to make purchases. And these were directly implemented at parts2clean, as Wolfgang Prem, Managing Director of Maschinenbau Silberhorn GmbH, reported: “This year we are taking away a whole lot of good leads with visitors from companies we did not know before. But the highlight of our participation in the tradeshow was that we were able to sell one of our new MWS cleaning systems to a company from Israel directly at our booth. It was a first contact that occurred right here at the show.” Manfred Holzleg, General Manager of Safechem Europe GmbH, also expressed his satisfaction: “At parts2clean, we always have the opportunity to meet a diverse audience. This year, we were able to hold numerous discussions, especially with visitors from industries that are new to us, and we can also open up new business fields as a result. However, parts2clean is also important for us from the point of view that the world market and technology leaders from the various areas of industrial cleaning technology come together here, and we can exchange information about developments and trends in an interdisciplinary manner.” Bahadir KöK, Sales Manager of the Turkish company Everest Elektro Mechanik Makina Sanayi Ve Tic. A.S. took a similar view: “parts2clean is one of the most important trade fairs for Everest. In order to become more independent from the automotive industry, we have developed new systems in line with the current standards in medical technology, which we are presenting here. We also invited our dealers from various countries to attend the fair so that we can present these new developments to them.” Maria Laure from the New Business Perfect Welding division at the Austria-based Fronius International company assesses her participation in the trade fair in the following light: “We participated in parts2clean for the third time and have noted a positive development, both in terms of visitor numbers as well as the international makeup. We conduct around 50 percent of our discussions in English. These are thorough-going discussions that deal with specific tasks, and in some cases the visitors even bring along the workpieces to be cleaned.”

Strong demand for information drives record attendance at Expert Forum

“A magnet for visitors has always been the bilingual Expert Forum at parts2clean,” remarks Nowak. “But this year it underpinned its status as one of the world’s most sought-after sources of expertise on industrial parts and surface cleaning, drawing record attendance.” And the numbers spoke for themselves: A total of 2,700 times knowledge transfer par excellence by listening to the simultaneously translated (German English) lectures by renowned speakers from science, research and industry to generate or deepen cleaning knowledge. “The enormous popularity of this forum shows that there is an immense need for information – both for traditional cleaning tasks as well as high-purity applications, which will continue to increase due to changing and new requirements,” adds Nowak.

2^nd FiT2clean Award presented

The last day of parts2clean also offered a special highlight, featuring the presentation of the FiT2clean Award. This was the second time that the German Industrial Parts Cleaning Association (FiT) honored outstanding achievements and solutions for parts cleaning. Intelligent Fluids GmbH secured the €10,000 innovation prize for the development of water-based, sustainable phase fluids that can replace standard solvents in numerous cleaning applications.