By James Wells
The world’s largest annual wine trade fair, ProWein, has opened the doors to its inaugural ProWine Asia exhibition in Hong Kong today with twice the space initially planned at launch.
The exhibition will run from 8-11 May and features 310 exhibitors from 21 countries across 2500 square metres of space – twice the area originally conceptualized at launch.
"Hong Kong is a crowded market for trade fairs in the wine industry, but we are gaining momentum and we are very happy with the result in our inaugural year,” said the exhibition’s global director, Marius Berlemann.
“We have doubled our initial expectations in terms of overall floor space. Our goal was to give the wine industry a different type of visitor as we are co-located with an existing food show that brings with it food service professionals from the restaurants and casinos in the South China area as well as from Hong Kong and Macao – this is something our competitors are no so focused on."
ProWine Asia is co-located with the HOFEX exhibition which focuses on food and hospitality products for the food service sector and features 2500 international exhibitors.
Among the Australian exhibitors at the ProWine Asia Hong Kong are Australian Wine Supply Group, Farmers Leap and Condo Wines. Australian wine exports to China grew by 43 per cent to $568 million in the 12 months to the end of March 2017.
The next ProWine China exhibition will be held in Shanghai from 14-16 November and a dedicated Wine Australia presence is once again expected at the event.