TOC Europe 2009 Review

TOC Europe was the first of the three TOC events to be launched. TOC has been established in Europe since 1976.

The event is the leading networking event for the international shipping, port and terminal community, its customers and its suppliers in the European region.

TOC Europe 2009 was run in Bremen, Germany. It was TOC’s first time in Bremen which proved to be a great location for the event. The venue was state-of-the-art and Bremen is easy to get to from all of Europe. Even now during the economic downturn, showing us a small dip in visitor numbers, the general feel from both exhibitors and visitors was that TOC Events Worldwide delivered a great event.

“TOC Europe 2009 was a well attended event which attracted the key people in the industry. It is important to exhibit at the event to meet with existing customers as well as securing new business opportunities. Even though the industry is suffering this year, our stand was busy throughout the show, and this allowed us to meet some new faces which will be important when the industry does pick up again. TOC Europe 2010 will be an important meeting place for the industry, as the economy will hopefully have recovered by then. We are looking forward to Valencia.” Frank van Laarhoven, Project Manager, Houcon Cargo Systems

 View photos from TOC Europe 2009

 View exhibitor testimonials from TOC Europe 2009

Visitors were asked to rate the exhibition on a scale from 1-10, 10 being excellent.

• Result: 7.6 (Compared to 5.9 in 2008)

Highlights from the research:

• 76% of visitors that attended TOC Europe 2009 found a new product of interest during the event
• 43% of visitors that attended TOC Europe 2009 attended the Free Technical Workshops
• 76% of visitors used the TOC Europe website to help them with their visit
• Each visitor visited an average of 15 exhibition stands

“TOC Europe 2009 surpassed all of our expectations. We only had a small presence at the exhibition but there was great interest in our products during the show. Simply by having a stand at TOC Europe, we met many new contacts and have arranged several extremely positive new business meetings with European terminal operators.” Sasha Niederhagen, Sales Mangement, SICK

We asked how visitors found out about the event. The results proves how important it is that exhibitors invite their clients to the event.

• Increasing rental of port equipment
• Cost reductions, productivity and efficiency improvements
• Crane Components
• Cost Control Reducing Price of new terminal construction
• Standardization and safety
• A slowing down of enquiries though economic times at this moment
• Improving efficiency while controlling costs

What do you think worked well at TOC Europe 2009?

• Networking
• Workshops
• Organisation
• Communication with suppliers
• Size, central location, free workshops
• Demonstration of simulators
• Layout of exhibition
• The overall setup works and should not be changed
• Discussions after the presentations
• Compact venue, hotels close by

If you have any questions in regards to the above please contact: maria.alm@toc-events.com

Highlights

• 76% of exhibitors thought that the quality of their visitors exceeded their expectations
• Exhibitors had an average of 44 quality visitor to their stand
• Exhibitors made an average of 18 new contacts

“The new workshops on the exhibition floor were a great addition to the 2009 event and they were all extremely well attended. Following our workshop presentation on the first day, we had several new visitors to our stand which was hugely encouraging”
Matt Ramsey, Director of Business Development, APS Technology Group

“Even though our product is not available yet, presenting at the technical workshops allowed us to demonstrate our expertise to a number of visitors, highlighting the benefits of our product to the people that matter in our industry”
Dag Tryggo, Managing Director, Loxystem

Were all the exhibitors there that you expected to see?
50% of exhibitors said that all exhibitors they expected to see at TOC Europe were there and the only exhibitors that were mentioned to be missing were Kalmar, ZPMC and CSV Ferrari which have all exhibited with us in the past.

Which elements of the event did you perceive as positive?

Here are a few of the commenst we received as a reply to this question:

• Location, organisation
• Contact with existing customers and market feedback
• More visitors than expected
• Quality of visitors
• Amount of visitors and the new workshops
• Compact fair and high quality of visitors
• Workshops
• Organisation team, lunch area, workshops, evening reception
• Logistics
• The high level of interest in our products and competition contact
• Contact with other exhibitors, good market overview, high quality contacts, catering
• Nice location, close to the city center
• The conference attendees
• Number of customers, Nice and clean show
• Service
• Good location, good quality of attendees
• Workshops, conference had the right players presenting, insightful information
• Networking with other TOC suppliers

If you have any questions in regards to the above please contact: maria.alm@toc-events.com

Highlights:

• 96% of the conference attendees thought that the conference exceeded their expectations
• 92% of the conference attendees thought that the speaker selection exceeded their expectations
• 82% of conference attendees will definitely attend the TOC Europe 2010 conference in Valencia

We asked attendees to comment on their overall experience:

• The location is perfect
• Conference was interesting it provide participants with possibility to meet colleagues and partner organizations also to establish new business and personal contacts.
• Less visitors than before but a very interesting and comprehensive event
• Despite the difficulties of budgets under pressure you managed to get quite a good number of people together
• Great conference and many friends of the industry trying to find the bright spots!
  The crisis brings us together....
• Especially in view of the worldwide economics, we were surprised to see the attendance at the usual high and the quality of projects being talked about was very promising for the near future.
• Good contents; crisis has hit hard on number and level of participants
• Informative and interesting topics
• The conference has met my expectations
• I had been looking forward to the event expecting to get an in-depth analysis of the market situation and I was not disappointed

If you have any questions in regards to the above please contact maria.alm@toc-events.com