BEC generated an impact of €73 million

In 2015, the year that marked the start of the recovery
• 2015: New events such as Pumps&Valves, Maintenance, Welcome, Exposición Internacional Canina, Japan Weekend & Expobaby.
• Over 2550 exhibitors. 847,000 visitors. 1679 jobs.
• 2016: BIEMH, BIOSPAIN, GustoKo, Egurtek, Biocultura, etc.: trade shows in a year to look forward to. 

 
The economic impact of the activities of the Bilbao Exhibition Centre in 2015 – 221 events which occupied the facilities for 272 days – in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) totalled €73,066,969. This translates into €10,800,859 in taxes for the Basque exchequer and the creation of 1679 jobs.

30% of this economic impact directly affected the centre, but 70% was felt by organisations outside the BEC, such as the hospitality, transport and leisure industries. 65% of it originated from exhibitors and the remaining 35% from visitors.

The cumulative economic impact of the BEC on GDP since its opening in 2004 is calculated to be €932,332,130, with taxation totalling €137,983,562 being collected.

In terms of participants, in 2015 the Bilbao Exhibition Centre welcomed a total of 2,554 exhibitors and a total of 847,985 visitors between trade specialists and the general public.

To sum up 2015 it is necessary to take a broad look at a great many different sectors, activities and proposals. These range from Expocosmética, Imaginenano, Feria de Nanociencia y Nanotecnología, Desembalaje, Bilbao Marine Energy Week, Ferroforma, Subcontratación, Expovacaciones, Euskal Encounter and the BIME-Bizkaia International Music Experience to concerts by Joaquín Sabina, Romeo Santos, Vetusta Morla, Maná, Rise Against and Fito & Fitipaldis, not to mention the unique BIME LIVE event, featuring music from around 30 groups who performed at the centre, including Imagine Dragons, Crystal Fighters and Benjamin Clementine among many others.

In 2015 the BEC also reached several agreements with private trade-show and event organisers which resulted in the launching of new events such as Pumps&Valves and Maintenance, two specialist fairs in the fields of pumps, valves and industrial maintenance organised in cooperation with Easyfairs; Welcome, the first “non-conference on tourism”, organised jointly with Sergofi and Turiskopio;  Japan Weekend, an event for fans of Manga, Anime, video-games and Japanese culture in general, by Jointo;  Expobaby, an event devoted to babies, children and parents, by FF Global Events; and the Exposición Internacional Canina (international dog show) organised by Sociedad Canina de Bizkaia.

One of the most significant points in 2015 was the simultaneous staging of five events in the field of manufacturing, two of them for the first time.  The events in question were Ferroforma, Subcontratación, Fitmaq and the first editions of Pumps & Valves and Maintenance. The stand-out attraction in this case was the potential for synergy between sectors, with connections between exhibitors and visitors from similar areas at all levels. To reinforce this aspect, a broad-ranging programme of technical seminars, live demonstrations, workshops, visits to companies and pre-arranged B2B meetings was organised.

Stand-out events at the Bizkaia Arena included large-scale concerts by Maná and Fito y los Fitipaldis in particular, plus of course Joaquín Sabina, Romeo Santos and Rise Against, among others, which between them attracted an audience of 90,500.

The congress sector is highly important in terms of its power to attract specialists from outside the Basque Country and of its potential synergies with trade shows.  Business meetings, congresses and seminars play an important part in the calendar of events at the BEC, which maintains close links with sectors of industry and the economy considered as strategic, such as the renewable energy sector in the case of the Bilbao Marine Energy Week, which was staged in April, and the management-level meetings held by Bosch Siemens, Banco Santander and Eroski, among others.

In the course of the year the BEC’s facilities were also used to film commercials, to stage dinner concerts, gala dinners, presentations, commemorations and large-scale examinations and even – for the first time – as a film set.  The crew filming the comedy feature film “Cuerpo de Élite: Misión Palomares” took up residence in halls 3 and 4 in July and shot a number of highly spectacular sequences there.

In 2014 the Bilbao Exhibition Centre began the task of renewing both its corporate website and the sites for its individual events. This process culminated in 2015 with the updating of the ties for the PIN children’s Christmas funfair, GustoKo, Tendencias Creativas and BEC Convenciones. This last site now offers more technical information for organisers. In total these sites received 1.5 million visits in 2015. We also continued to combine our corporate website and in-house sites with specific channels on social networks, and incorporated new apps and promotional elements into the general BEC accounts. The centre’s Facebook page reached 38,000 followers.

It is worth highlighting that the Bilbao Exhibition Centre and  SPRI, the Basque government’s business development agency, renewed their cooperation agreement for the international promotion of trade events such as BIEMH, Subcontratación, Fitmaq, Sinaval and Ferroforma in those countries where the agency operates.

SPRI has a network of 15 foreign offices that cover around 60 countries worldwide.  This agreement has been maintained continuously since 2005. Since that time more than 4200 foreign purchasers have attended trade fairs at the BEC thanks to the intermediation of SPRI.

In July Xabier Basañez, the General Director of the Bilbao Exhibition Centre moved from being Deputy Chair and Treasurer of the Association of Spanish Trade Fair Complexes (AFE) to being its Chair.

2016, A YEAR FOR CONSOLIDATION

In 2016 the first sign of innovation can be found in the 29th BIEMH Machine-tool Biennial, one of the landmark events of the BEC’s calendar. This year’s event will focus on smart manufacturing and the associated working paradigms, in which exhibitors will be showing off highly advanced solutions in the fields of machinery, tools, components & accessories, automation of processes and manufacturing, metrology and quality control, materials and services.   The BIEMH expects to feature 1500 exhibitors and to attract 42,000 visitors from all over the world, all looking to do business in a cutting-edge sector that is strategically important for the competitiveness of industrial firms.

Taking the opportunity offered by the staging of this major industrial event, the BEC will be taking another step forward in its commitment to advanced manufacturing with the launching of a pioneering event called ADDIT3D: Spain’s first 3D and additive manufacturing fair, aimed exclusively at the trade.

Two international conferences will be staged concurrently with this event: the Oil&Gas Conference and the Maintenance Innovation Conference, which are envisaged as a continuation of the Pumps&Valves and Maintenance trade-shows launched in 2015 with the cooperation of specialist Belgian technical trade-show organiser EasyFairs. The idea is for these events to make up a single, sectoral discussion forum.  A forum for promoting employment in this sector will also be staged in the form of “WORKinn”, for specialist students and representatives of industrial manufacturing firms.

The 29th BIEMH seems set to confirm the positive impact on results at the Bilbao Exhibition Centre of the crash programme implemented three years ago and consolidate good progress at the centre.

Following the success of the 2012 edition, the BEC is set once again to host Europe’s biggest biotechnology event – BIOSPAIN – in September 2016. Regina Revilla, chair of ASEBIO, recently stated that “our experience in the Basque Country for Biospain 2012 was exceptional in terms of the high number of attendees, the suitability of the infrastructures for our event and the level of involvement of the local authorities, who are highly committed to R&D”.

The calendar of events at the BEC also includes the 6th Egurtek International Forum for Architecture and Construction in Wood; the Biocultura International Fair of Environmentally-friendly Products and Responsible Consumption; the first edition of GustoKo, the heir to the “Algusto” foodstuffs fair, which is to focus directly on high-quality foodstuffs and on going back to basics; the second Expobaby & Kids event; and such other firmly established events as Expovacaciones, Welcome, Fosminer, Nagusi, Expobodas, Feria del Vehículo de Ocasión, BIME and the PIN children’s Christmas funfair, among others.

For its part BEC Convenciones is also to host a number of varied activities, including two major events in the EWEA Work Shop Spring 2016 organised by the European Wind Energy Association and an event linked to the aeronautics industry to be called the Aero Innovation Event (AEROIE), which is scheduled to take place in March.

At the Bizkaia Area internationally renowned musicians will be taking centre stage this year. The programme of events kicks off in January with a concert by Bryan Adams, who is returning to the BEC eleven years after he first played here. Other performers and shows scheduled and confirmed include Eros Ramazzotti, Disney On Ice, Il Divo and The Cure.

Department of Communication, January 2016

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