Words and photos by John Madden, Brand Manager for Carbatec Pty Ltd
I was recently fortunate enough to visit the 2015 Canton Fair, which is the largest biannual trade fair held at Guangzhou in southern China.
Our team flew into Hong Kong from where we travelled through Hong Kong Harbour and up the Shizi Ocean strait on a large commercial ferry. Never having been to China before, this was an experience to remember. All along the river is a mixture of large farms, industrial complexes and immense high-rise housing developments. Forget the quaint junks and fisher boats - China means business.
The Canton Fair is a trade fair held in the spring and autumn seasons each year since the spring of 1957 and is the largest trade fair in China. In fact, each session of the Canton Fair is so large that it is broken into three phases to accommodate everyone. An estimated 165,000 people and 200 trading companies and regions participate.
Phase One of the Spring session features lighting, building materials, hardware and tools. Phase Two has consumer goods gifts and toys and Phase 3 features textiles, garments, office supplies, medicines, health products, food and produce. This program is repeated in the autumn months. Our team visited phase one and believe me, this list is a very short summary of what’s on display.
Like everything in China, the venue is also immense. Known as the Pazhou Complex, this venue boasts over 1.1 million square metres of exhibition space consisting of nearly 56,000 standard booths. Having experienced a few trade shows in Australia myself, the mind boggles due to the sheer massiveness of this event and how the changeovers occur of goods and people occurs within the timeframes of the event phases.
So what did we see at the fair? Well for some time now I have thought that everything is made in China and now I am convinced this is true. Our team was there to source woodworking products and that’s exactly what we saw. Power tools, hand-planes, machinery and hand tools everywhere. I must admit there were few innovative products, however there was plenty there to keep our shops shelves full.