Southern Manufacturing relocates

The Southern Manufacturing & Electronics Show has announced a change of venue for 2008. After ten years at Thorpe Park in Surrey, the industrial and manufacturing exhibition will be relocating to a new facility at Farnborough in Hampshire. The dates of the show – 6 and 7 of February 2008 – remain unchanged.

Farnborough International Limited, organiser of the iconic Farnborough International Airshow, announced last week the launch of Farnborough International Venue and Events(FIVE), a new venture to open up the site as a permanent exhibition venue.

Phil Valentine, managing director of show organiser ETES, said, “The growth of the Southern Manufacturing & Electronics show in recent years meant that we’d reached the limits of what we could achieve on the Thorpe Park site. Redevelopment plans for the Park would have made it increasingly unsuitable for our needs in the future. The opening-up of the Farnborough site as a permanent exhibition venue has given us a timely opportunity to secure a valuable tenancy slot at a world-renowned exhibition site. It offers us future stability and greater scope to improve our exhibitors' and visitors' event experience. We are very excited to be part of this new development and delighted to be able to deliver the benefits of this prestigious venue to our clients.”

Farnborough’s location, just 12 miles south of Thorpe Park, is right in the middle of the show’s visitor catchment area and means for the majority of visitors to the Southern shows, travel times will be significantly reduced.

The site also offers tremendous scope for future growth and development and ETES have already added over 25% more space for 2008. Phil Valentine said, “Taking advantage of the new opportunities of the site, we are already well advanced in our plans for a major new attraction alongside the Southern Manufacturing & Electronics Show in 2008 and will be announcing details in the near future.”