Next year's Stone+tec will be a few weeks later than usual ... although potential exhibitors can gain some savings by being early.



The stone show for central Europe will be June 22-25 next year at the Exhibition Centre Nuremberg, in a move to ease scheduling, but also take advantage of Stone+tec's biggest crowd-getter.



Although the biennial show usually occurs in late May, other events set for the same time next year would cause major congestion – adding to the 34,000+ attendees expected for Stone+tec.

The move down the 2011 calendar (announced last September and noted then on the Calendar of Events at Stone Business Online) coincides with one of Stone+tec's best drawing cards – a holiday that falls right in the middle of the show's run. Nuremberg’s exhibit halls are jammed on the holiday, when most businesses (except lodging and restaurants) are closed.

In May, it's usually Ascension Day (Christi Himmefahrt), although this occurs in early June next year. The new dates include Corpus Christi Day (Fronleichnam) on June 23, which is a holiday observed in Nuremberg's Bavaria and surrounding southern German states.

The new dates also represent an upbeat mood from NürnbergMesse, the producers of Stone+tec, who plan to build on the 34,458 total attendance and 770 exhibitors at last year's event.

"We are confident that a further upward trend will be apparent in 2011 – also due to the more positive signals finally coming from the world economy again," says Willy Viethen, exhibition director for Stone+tec at NürnbergMesse.

The show producers also plan to get exhibitors in a buying mood with an early-bird discount on space rental for applications received by Sept. 24.

Participation from this side of the Atlantic Ocean is usually small – less than 700 attendees last year – but it's often a crowd of larger stone companies and U.S. distributors. Stone+tec offers a less-hectic opportunity from the industry's megashows to meet one-on-one with vendors not only from central Europe and the United Kingdom, but from other countries such as China and Turkey.