The number of 14,507 registered visitors increased by 10 per cent compared with the previous show in 2012. Attendees came from throughout China but also the internationalisation of the trade show is evident; the share of international visitors increased to 14 per cent of the total attendance.
Business week
VIV Worldwide project manager, Ruwan Berculo, said: "Our primary target was to attract the top technical leaders and business decision-makers in pigs, poultry and aquaculture from the seven main Chinese provinces for animal protein production. Our proposition: to offer a business week with a rich programme of great scientific and commercial content, directly relevant to the challenges and market developments in China today."
China's dynamics
Mr Berculo continued: "From our market surveys we learned that extending the VIV China format - so it became a hub of a wide range of different information exchanges and networking opportunities over several days - could have equal appeal to those professionals from other countries who wanted to learn about China's own dynamics in producing animal proteins. In fact the appeal outgrew our expectations, because the attendance figures show that foreign visitors comprised almost 20 per cent of the total."
From Summit to Show
Although the business environment of the VIV China 2014 exhibition itself occupied the three days from Tuesday 23 September to Thursday 25 September, it was the culmination of a full package of knowledge-transfer meetings for the livestock industries and aquaculture that began in Beijing the previous Saturday (20 September) with a three-day VIV International China Summit.
The components of the Summit included an international poultry forum, a pork outlook seminar, an Aquatic China conference and topical commercial seminars and presentations, so demonstrating the range of growth industries that the China Livestock Industry Week was designed to serve.
Wide spectrum
VIV China 2014 was the biggest show yet in the biennial series dating from 2000. It now needed three halls instead of two at Beijing's New China International Exhibition Center in order to accommodate more exhibitors with bigger booths. Significantly, too, important industry segments such as poultry breeding were represented more strongly than in the past, while another show highlight was the wide spectrum of feed manufacturing technology on display.
At the trade show, about 120 out of the 450 exhibitors were companies from outside China. In total they originated from 35 countries.
World's Poultry Congress
Looking ahead to 2016, the show format now is set. VIV China returns on the dates of 6 to 8 September, to be at the heart of a business week starting on Sunday 4 September – during which, the exhibition will be co-located in Beijing with the World's Poultry Congress 2016.
