This year 50% of the trade fair visitors came from abroad; this means that the International Tube and Pipe Fair has registered a very high foreign share. The visitors to the fair came from a total of 76 countries. The majority of international trade visitors came from India, North America, South and Central America, the Netherlands, Italy, France, Great Britain, Belgium, Spain and the Czech Repub-lic to the exhibition halls on the Rhine. Here visitors dominated from the following sectors: trade (23%), tube and pipe production (19%), iron, steel and non-ferrous metal industry (11%), vehicle industry (8%). 6% of visitors came from the skilled trades sector.

The visitors are characterized by a high decision-making competence with around 50% coming from the echelons of top management: 26% of the visitors were managing directors or senior employees. 19% came from their companies' purchasing departments, 17% were experts from sales, marketing and PR. 12% of visitors came from production, while the research, development and construc-tion areas accounted for 10%.

The share of regular Tube visitors is 20%. Particularly encouraging is the trend among first-time visitors: 45% of respondents stated that they had visited Tube in Düsseldorf for the first time. The duration of stay in the exhibition halls was on average 1.5 days, a result which reflects the international trend towards shorter trade fair visits.

For 46% of visitors the making of new business contacts was the most important reason for visiting the Tube halls on the Rhine, followed by their aim to find out here about new products/innovations and trends from the tube and pipe sector (41%) and obtain information about systems and applications (36%).

For 31% of respondents cultivating existing business contacts was the focal point of their visit to the fair, as was obtaining information about prices (21%) and monitoring the competition (20%). Around 30% of the visitors asked re-ported order-placing after Tube, which was directly attributable to their visit to the fair. Around 50% stated that they had considered placing orders immediately after the fair had closed.

The majority of Tube visitors (58%) were interested in tubes, pipes and accesso-ries, followed by pipe/tube-processing machines (28%) and raw materials (24%) as well as pipe/tube-manufacturing machines (23%) and pipe/tube-finishing machines (23%). Overall 98 percent of fair visitors surveyed gave Tube good to outstanding ratings; 74% of the respondents are planning to visit Tube 2008.

100 exhibitors more than at Tube 2004:
As far as the exhibitors are concerned, a similarly positive trend is clearly evi-dent, whereby in this area too the share of international companies is developing at a faster rate. From a total of 660 exhibitors in 2000, which then reached over 700 exhibitors two years later rising up to 730 companies which were present at Tube 2004 - a constant level of growth! The clearest development is the surge in exhibitor figures from Tube 2004 to Tube 2006: a rise of 100 companies and thus a dramatic increase in the number of exhibitors at Tube!
The share of foreign companies has increased by 20 percent; this is also an indication of the worldwide significance of Tube. The share accounted for by German companies increased by 3%. Tube also registered considerable in-creases as far as rented net space is concerned: an increase of 14% in terms of hall occupation by foreign exhibitors, while German companies accounted for an increase of 9 %.

89% of exhibitors were satisfied with their business contact-making and actual sales deals during Tube. The clear structuring of the halls according to product sectors, the completeness of the product range and a high percentage of foreign trade fair visitors impressed Tube exhibitors. 90% were very satisfied with the overall business at Tube.

82% of the respondents already stated during the fair that they would be partici-pating once again at Tube 2008. For the exhibiting companies and visitors at the Tube fair in 2006, valuable synergy effects were once again produced by the parallel staging of the event with wire, International Wire and Cable Trade Fair.

The world's two leading trade fairs for the wire, cable and tube/pipe industries, wire und Tube, and one of the leading international trade fairs for metalworking and processing, METAV, will be held in 2008 (31st March to 4. April) parallel to each other in Düsseldorf. Exhibitors and visitors at all three events will benefit from this constellation, as a whole range of synergies will be produced between the industrial target groups.

The latest information on both trade fairs is available on the Internet at www.wire.de and www.Tube.de .

Media contacts at wire 2006 and Tube 2006:
Petra Hartmann-Bresgen/Janusch Krahmer
Tel.: +49(0)211/4560 -541/-544; Fax;:+49(0)211/4560 87-541/-544
HartmannP@messe-duesseldorf.de/KrahmerJ@messe-duesseldorf.de/
www.wire.de and www.Tube.de