A new “green” approach

This year's Spoga+Gafa from 30 August to 1 September in Cologne will have four exhibition zones instead of the five featured previously. The garden basic segment is being discarded and integrated primarily into the garden living segment with the product groups of garden furniture, garden equipment, decoration and sports and games. One new segment that has been created is the garden bbq segment for the grills and BBQs product group. The big plant distributor Landgard is being assigned to the garden creation & care segment. It is the second time that Landgard, which will now take up all of Hall 5.1, has participated in spoga+gafa. The fourth exhibition offer segment is garden unique, which will feature new premium products. By mid-May 90 per cent of the 225 000 m² exhibition area had been reserved. Foreign companies are expected to constitute over 80 per cent of the exhibitors. In switching to Hall 5, Landgard is moving "into the heart of the fair", according to a press release by the company. In addition to the areas where plants are to be presented, special areas will be devoted to new sales promotion concepts.

By involving Landgard in Spoga+Gafa, Koelnmesse has evi­dently succeeded in strengthening the plant zone that is so vital to a "green" trade show. However, this move hasn't exactly inspired other plant suppliers to turn up at the fair, something that the fair management didn't expect at all. The programme of events accompanying the show is once again diverse, extending from the barbecue area set up by the Barbecue Industry Association Grill (BIAG) via the boulevard of ideas to the garden café on the show boulevard with talks and discussion sessions. One item of relevance to the German sector is a new end consumer event, the "Day of the Garden". This will be staged on the Saturday before the fair, 29 August, and on the Sunday of the fair. Directly following the fair will be the Garden Summit of the German trade association BHB on 2 September. As a purely trade event, Spoga+Gafa is unaffected by the "Day of the Garden", but for Koelnmesse this initiative is important as garden power equipment suppliers, who have turned their back on the fair in previous years, seem to be taken with this new format. At any rate, the garden sector…