“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” wheezed Bob Dylan in one of his signature songs from the early ’60s. By the same standard you don’t need a PR agent to know something big is up when everyone is talking about it.
At the Feb. 15 meeting of the PVF Roundtable (covered last month in this space), the biggest buzz in the room was about the upcomingValve World Expo Americas 2011 (WVEA) slated for June 21-22 in Houston. It seemed everyone at the PVF Roundtable meeting talked about it.
VWEA is an offshoot of the every-other-year Valve World Conference & Exhibition held in Dusseldorf, Germany. The last version took place over three days last fall and featured 536 international companies from 37 countries presenting the latest industrial valve technology. The event attracted almost 10,000 visitors.
The first edition of VWEA won’t be anywhere near that size and scope, but as first impressions go it’s shaping up as a winner. Exhibition space was sold out by the end of January, more than four months before the event. I suspect the organizers wish they had booked a bigger venue than the Woodlands Waterways Marriott Hotel & Convention Center.
As it stands, 82 exhibitors from 14 countries have signed up. The majority of the exhibitors are from the U.S., Canada, China, Italy and Germany, but companies will also come from as far away as Brazil, South Korea, Japan and the Netherlands. What attendance will be is anyone’s guess at this stage, but I won’t be surprised if it, too, surpasses expectations.
The exhibition will be complemented by a concurrently held conference focused on the latest technologies and products for the industrial valve sector. The Steering Committee of the conference will consist of end users such as Fluor, BP, Saudi Aramco, Technip, DuPont Engineering, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell, as well as associations and a select group of representatives from valve suppliers and manufacturers. The conference Chairman is Jerry D’Avanzo from DuPont Engineering Technology.
The Valve World Conference Americas 2011 will be sponsored by Cameron, Crane, Dresser, Emerson Process Management, McJunkin Red Man Corp., Tyco Flow Control and Velan - with the support of the Valve Manufacturers Association of America.
For more information, visitwww.valveworldexpoamericas.comor call Messe Dusseldorf North America at 312-781-5180.
