FederUnacoma Signs Agreement Extending EIMA's Stay at BolognaFiere Until 2030

The new agreement between FederUnacoma and BolognaFiere includes restructuring and improving the fairgrounds to enable EIMA's further growth potential.

FederUnacoma

The agreement between BolognaFiere and FederUnacoma for the EIMA international exhibition has been officially signed. Franco Boni, President of BolognaFiere, and Massimo Goldoni, President of the Italian Agricultural Machinery Manufacturers Federation that organizes the exhibition, announced they have signed a new contract during a press conference in Bologna held February 1, 2017.

The agreement, valid until 2030, states that the contracting parties commit to hold eight biennial editions starting in 2018. The agreement consolidates a historic collaboration that began with the first edition of the fair held in 1969 in the city capital of the Emilia-Romagna region, and that has allowed to organize 36 annual editions and six biennial editions (starting in 2006).

The agreement provides that BolognaFiere will put in place a vast project for restructuring and improving the fairgrounds – a necessary condition in order to develop further prospects of growth for the international agricultural machinery exhibition – with interventions spread out over a period of 8 years and the completion of the works by the 2024 edition. The agreement also provides for two intermediate steps respectively in 2018 and in 2022 that will allow to monitor the advancement of the project with regard to the requirements of the event.

Once reconstruction is complete, the net exhibiting area will be of 140,000 sq. m, inside newly developed pavilions, with the highest standards in terms of comfort and functionality.   

The overall investment for the revamping plan of the grounds of BolognaFiere is part of the broader development plan of the company, which has been approved by the shareholders’ meeting held in December 2016. 

Boni in a statement said that, “The approval of the development plan on the part of the shareholders’ meeting of BolognaFiere will further reinforce our competitivity at an international level, also creating new business opportunities for the events we organize and for the ones we host. Bologna is one of the best exhibiting locations in terms of transport and in terms of richness of the territory, which transforms the stay in the city into an experience that is not limited to the commercial aspects. A favorable situation thanks also to the collaboration between BolognaFiere and the local institutions, above all the City Council and the Region, a collaboration that is aimed at a broader project of territorial marketing.”

Goldoni stated that, “The new agreement follows a precise economic plan that measures EIMA’s potential also in terms of future development, and represents, for both parties, a carefully reasoned choice, also strongly supported by the Emilia-Romagna Region and by the City of Bologna. The agreement, however, also has a very important symbolic meaning, because the Emilia-Romagna Region is a land of agriculture and machinery in the collective imagination, where a considerable number of industries that produce machinery, equipment and components for agriculture and park maintenance are located. This agreement therefore reinforces the alliance between agriculture and industry, and makes Bologna ‘world capital of agricultural mechanization’.”

The President of the Emilia-Romagna Region, Stefano Bonaccini, commented, “The agreement reached by BolognaFiere and EIMA is extremely important not only because it means that Bologna and the Emilia-Romagna Region will continue to be an extremely effective global showcase in the sector of high tech linked to agricultural mechanization, but also because it is an explicit acknowledgement of the centrality of the regional fair system, at the heart of the internationalization policies for a productive system that operates on the global market. For this reason the Emilia-Romagna Region, together with private and public partners, has worked to create the right conditions for the Bologna Fair to relaunch its activities, to strengthen its structures and renovate the area, and to ensure that BolognaFiere and the region’s fair system in general – which we hope in the future will fall under a unified regional governance – may benefit from conditions for development that are indispensable for an effective promotion of our productive system.”

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