A CRUCIAL PHASE FOR THE PRECISION FAIR When former director of Mikrocentrum Geert Hellings looks back on 20 years of Precision Fair, the years around 2012, in particular, were crucial to him. We spoke with him on the eve of the 20th edition. The success of the Precision Fair has not always been self-evident. “There have also been the necessary critical and defining moments”, Geert Hellings remembers. The most crucial phase is halfway through the history of the event, he says. Four causes can be identified for this. 1 The early winter of 2010 “A nationwide weather warning caused the second day of the Precision Fair in 2010 to be much less crowded than usual. We wanted to prevent this from happening again. It was solved by gradually moving the fair to earlier dates in November. It did mean though, that the Precision Fair sometimes started to coincide with German trade fairs, where some of the Precision Fair exhibitors also participated.” the Precision Fair during those years. To accommodate more exhibitors, a solution was found in building a temporary extra aluminum hall, the so-called ‘Dommelhal’. Because of the high costs and because our Plastics Fair was also struggling with the use of space, this hall was already built in September and remained until after the Precision Fair. During the first version with the extra hall in 2012, the ground was not ideal and there were some showcases where the products slid slowly from one side to the other due to the vibrations of the floor. That problem was remedied in the second year. Both the Plastics Fair and the Precision Fair were, therefore, able to grow from 200 to about 300 exhibitors. In order to facilitate lunch for the exhibitors, there was also a second temporary hall that was also used for the evening program from then on.” 3 2 18 Waiting lists “The Precision Fair had been fully booked for years by making the best use of all available space in NH Conference Center Koningshof. This led to other organizations launching proposals for alternatives of “Around the same period, Syntens started thinking about moving the successful Meet & Match talks to another fair. After good coordination with them, the Meet & Match could be retained for the Precision Fair.” Syntens
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