Formnext begins this Tuesday at the Frankfurt exhibition center, but only for vaccinated and recovered exhibitor teams and trade visitors.

After this concept failed for the Indoor-Air trade fair in September because the companies saw the difficulty of not being able to ask employees about their vaccination status, the 2-G rule has now been agreed in intensive discussions with the exhibitors, said a spokesman for the fair on request.

Patricia Andreae

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Around 600 exhibitors, around 55 percent of them from abroad, have registered for the face-to-face event.

It is considered the leading industry platform for industrial 3-D printing and an international meeting place for intelligent industrial production.

"It was a long 18 months in which we only met digitally, and we all missed the personal encounters and the exchange of ideas that are so important in our innovative industry," says the website and continues: "This year too the most important companies in the industry will be represented at Formnext. "

"Politics must not lapse into actionism"

They are also hoping for the next trade fairs in Frankfurt, especially Heimtextil and the Fashion Week in January. "We are prepared for regular events," says the fair. There are "excellent hygiene concepts". There is currently no reason to deviate from the presence concept. However, nobody can know how the pandemic will develop and what decisions politicians will then make, said the spokesman for the fair. There is an intensive exchange with town and country.

Meanwhile, on Monday, the Association of the Exhibition Industry called on politicians in the federal and state levels to act “extremely carefully” when assessing the Corona situation. The trade fair restart, which has been ongoing since September, is at risk. "Politics must not lapse into actionism," said Jörn Holtmeier, managing director of the AUMA association. Last winter's recipes were no longer good. “Even the latest recommendation by the Robert Koch Institute to cancel all events across the board is hardly understandable with a vaccination rate of at least 78 percent of adults.” Visitors and organizers of responsibly planned trade fairs are deeply insecure. “Trade fairs are safe, easily regulated and manageable marketplaces for trade and business.

It was with good reason that many trade fair professionals were entrusted with vaccination centers across the country, ”said Holtmeier.

After all, major trade fairs have only been possible again since September.

Until then, the industry had been shut down almost entirely since March 2020.

This caused overall economic damage of more than 43.5 billion euros, in the trade fair industry itself, but also in the associated hospitality and transport industry.