The team at National Electronics Week South Africa are currently celebrating a highly successful debut in Johannesburg, following a sold-out show that surpassed all expectations. Attracting over 1,700 visitors, there has already been tremendous support for a follow up show in 2011.

The show played host to the likes of Actum Electronics, Altium SA, Avnet Kopp, Brabek, Communica, Dizzy Enterprises, EBV SA, Goepel Electronics Ltd., Juki, MYDATA Automation Ltd, Radel, RS Components SA, Testerion and Zetech. Attracted by NEW’s commitment to supporting the entire industry, including Components, Design & Development, Embedded, EMS, Photonics & Laser, Production Assembly, Solar & Green Design, Test & Measurement and Wireless, many exhibitors sold equipment on stand.

Commenting on the show’s success, NEW SA Event Director Claire Saunders explains: “We’re obviously delighted with the show – we always knew it would be successful but the scale of this success surprised even us! The atmosphere inside the exhibition hall was practically euphoric; I was inundated with positive feedback from UK and South African exhibitors alike. Manufacturing equipment provider, Red Rhino, even sold an entire production line on their stand! Exhibitors turned up to the show believing that South Africa was a small market that they knew inside out. But, as it turned out, they didn’t. 1,700 visitors turned up, many of them with Gerber data and real world production challenges to investigate with exhibitors. Because of this, we saw large volumes of equipment sold. The visitor response was phenomenal and we’ve sold even more space for this year’s UK event as a result.”

In addition to the high number of South African exhibitors who flocked to the show, UK exhibitors were also extremely happy; the UK Pavilion was thriving throughout and many turned out to see UKTI Trade Commissioner, Brian Gallagher, talk about the strong union building between the two regions. NEW SA’s educational line-up was also extremely well received; Microsoft’s Windows Embedded workshops were oversubscribed while programmes from EDA/Altium Designer, the SMART Group SA  and Microchip were also full.  Other educational highlights included IPC training certification and a series of other seminarsfrom DEK, Kyzen and Ocean Optics.

The combination of extensive business and networking opportunities, along with educational highlights, proved to be extremely popular with visitors. The NEW SA team collected a vast amount of positive feedback over the course of the event. The show’s supporting social media sites also registered positive comments; with twitter feedback including “Went to National Electronics Week SA Expo, definitely recommend it, glad to see such a large supplier base exists in this country…” and “Just got back from the NEWExpo. I should have organised the company credit card, would have maxed it.”