Manufacturers and traders in an array of industrial goods including machinery, appliances, tools and accessories will have the opportunity to view technologies and processes, seek business tie-ups and find new buyers at an exhibition scheduled to be held at the Expo Centre in Sharjah from 5 to 8 May this year.

The Sharjah Industrial Show, organised by Expo Centre Sharjah and supported by the emirate's business chamber, will also feature raw materials and chemicals relevant to various industrial categories.

A spokesman of the organisers said the Sharjah Industrial Show 2002 was another successful forum in the making, following the 2001 edition, which drew an enthusiastic response from the business community and led to substantial sales.

The show has lined up an impressive diversity of industrial goods including power generators and air compressors, IT products and telecommunications, medical equipment and supplies, construction machinery, building materials, wood working machines and sanitary and plumbing.

The profile also covers sealants and adhesives, refrigeration and air-conditioning, paints and paint equipment, spray guns and high-pressure rubber pipes, metals, galvanised pipes, steel products, electrical wires, switchgears and other electrical products, automotive products, plastic equipment and printing and packaging machines.

The show is in keeping with Sharjah's growing importance to the UAE economy as an industrial area and its expanding role in the region as a provider of high-quality goods and business opportunities. The emirate is said to house 45 per cent of the UAE's total industrial units and its contribution to the nation's GDP is estimated to be Dh24 billion.

Two free trade zones - Saif and Hamriyah - are helping consolidate UAE industry with a growing number of new ventures, many of them initiated by investors from overseas. Saif, which started operations in 1995, housed 520 companies and Hamriyah 180 by the third quarter of 2001. The total figure for the whole of the emirate, including free zones, was said to be in the region of 960 by the end of 2001.

Manufacturers and investors are also attracted by Sharjah's proximity to Dubai and the access it offers through its own airport and seaports and those of Dubai and nearby emirates to markets East and West and on the subcontinent.

"Participation at the Sharjah Industrial Show, 2002, can help not only in profitably introducing products and building new partnerships in the Middle East, it could also make it convenient to set up manufacturing, distribution or a marketing base in this strategically placed city," said Expo Centre deputy director-general Fasahat Ali Khan.

He underlined its significance in the context of the GCC's industrial potential, saying the Gulf's machinery and equipment market was known to grow at 15 per cent per year with investments in base metal and other industries in the region increasing in 1999 to $13.44 billion from $12.71 billion in 1998.

According to Khan, the Sharjah Industrial Show 2001 must have generated $80 million to $100 million in new business. That event incorporated the Taiwan Industrial Show (TIS), which was organised by Taiwan's China External Trade Development Council (Cetra) in co-operation with Expo Centre Sharjah.

"Among the participants at the TIS, Noveltek Industrial Manufacturing Inc, not only sold all of their automated material handling equipment but also appointed an agent," he said.

"Again, Steady Stream Business Company, also from Taiwan, got an overwhelming response for their first-rank high-speed plastic injection moulding machines, taking away several orders from the show. "In Iran's pavilion, Shisheh & Glass Company, producers of glass jars and crystal dishes, took back trial orders worth $600,000, while appointing an agent. Hepco, manufacturers of construction and earthmoving equipment, booked orders worth more than half a million dollars."

Sharjah Industrial Show 2001 featured more than 150 companies from all over the world with the goods displayed falling under the following industries: construction and building materials, chemicals, hardware, garment manufacturing, autoparts and accessories, plastics, packaging and printing, electronics, IT and telecommunications, factory automation, timber, aviation, interiors, electrical and lighting, food processing, furniture manufacturing, paper and paper products, base metals and metal products, among others.

"Sharjah Industrial Show proved a very profitable experience for its participants, with most exhibitors not only returning with finalised trial orders and a large number of sales leads and enquiries to be followed up but also with a better understanding of what potential the Middle East market holds for their specific industrial goods," said Khan.

"Functioning as a dynamic industrial forum in the Middle East, the show saw more than 7,000 industrialists and industrial traders from more than 40 countries visit the four-day event, lured by the prospect of interacting with international and Sharjah-based suppliers of cutting-edge manufacturing and automation technology and related products in their line of business."

About the impact of the show, he said: "The Arabian Gulf's remarkable industrial development of the past looks all set to forge ahead, thanks in some good measure to this show."