Feed Expo profits from poultry show
The International Feed Expo in Atlanta attracted more visitors than ever. The organisation can be satisfied, but visitors in majority came to visit the parallel annual poultry exhibition.
This can be a first conclusion after studying the attendance figures from
this year’s show. At the 2007 edition for the first time the International Feed Expo (IFE) joined
the regular annual International Poultry
Exposition (IPE) in Atlanta, Georgia.
Total attendance was
recorded at 19,645 visitors (+1,629) of which 3,977, or 20.2% came from outside
the USA. Total attendance outnumbered the 2004 expo when 19,171 visitors cam to
Atlanta.
AFIA is pleased
“The breakdown per state is very revealing,” said
Rex Runyon, vice president of the American Feed Industry Association (AFIA
).
“Looking at the Midwestern states and the Great Lakes states where the majority
of our members reside, attendance increased in every state.
“In fact,
figures show that those states recorded the best turnout in the past five Expos.
I take this as verification that AFIA’s role in the co-location contributed
directly to the significant increase in attendance.
“We are extremely
pleased with the results and happy to confirm that the decision to co-locate the
International Feed Expo with the International Poultry Expo was an overwhelming
success,” Runyon said.
The last IFE was in September 2005 in Kansas City, Missouri and
attracted nearly 2,300 visitors, but showed a continuous downward trend. From
this last show and previous ones in Minneapolis and Indianapolis it could be
concluded that its individual existence was no longer tenable.
Announcing
the joining of IPE and IFE Joel Newman, AFIA president, said that the
partnership offered “a number of synergies including increased attendance,
enhanced educational opportunities, and expanded marketing outreach for our
respective exhibitors.”
Foreign
visitors
Foreign visitors mainly came from
Canada (780), Mexico (506) and to a lesser extent from Venezuela (217), Colombia
(199), Brazil (136) and the Netherlands (122).
US visitors for a majority
came from the state of Georgia (where Atlanta is located) with an attendance of
4,347 (28% of domestic visitors), followed by Illinois (971 or 6.3%).
Don
Dalton, president of IPE organiser USPoultry, probably was also
very realistic when he said that “this partnership greatly strengthens the
feed manufacturing component of IPE and immediately broadens our appeal to that
audience.”
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