SPS Italia Trade Show Blog – Inovance Italy

  By Guido Colombo, Sales Director

It was great to be back at SPS Italia at the end of May – the first trade show that our Inovance Technology Italy team have attended since 2019. We didn’t have too far to travel, since we are based in Milan, and we were excited to be able to meet a wide range of leading OEMs and end users in sectors such as printing, converting, labeling, and ceramics.

The Inovance Technology Italy Team

What seemed to stand out most to potential customers was the performance and design of our solutions, and we left the show with some strong sales leads. As well as talking to potential customers, it was also great to meet with some of the leading Italian trade journalists in the automation industry.

The Inovance team really valued the ability to showcase their impressive technical knowledge and skills concerning our products and the industry as a whole, as well as showing off our full range of AC drives including the MD800 compact AC multidrive. A really key goal of the show for us was the chance to showcase our investment in Italy. As an international company, we intend to make a big splash in Italy and, in order to do so, we know we need to have the strongest presence on the ground in the country. That’s why we’ve hired a highly capable local team. Crucially, we’ve built an R&D office in Milan that enables us to tailor our products to the specific needs of local Italian customers.

Our impressive product portfolio including the MD800 compact AC multi-drive 

I think the pandemic has changed many things when it comes to business travel. In particular, corporate execs will probably now be less willing to fly halfway around the world for internal meetings that could easily be conducted on Zoom. However, when it comes to the trade show, I really think we are returning to normal. Business is based on relationships, and nothing beats face to face meetings. They enable customers to fully appreciate the complex and dynamic solutions we can offer, and they give the chance to actually go and find the person you need to speak to in a way that isn’t possible in any other context.

The atmosphere was buzzing and there was certainly a feel of contentment and satisfaction in the air. Frankly, it felt like people are excited to do business again. It was also great to hear that some potential clients were interested in finding alternative solutions to the ones they were previously using. One trend that the pandemic has caused is that customers now feel they can’t fully depend on what have turned out to be extremely fragile global supply chains. To mitigate this, they want to ensure they have multiple suppliers for products such as AC drives.

Customers at the Inovance stand

The show further confirmed what we already knew about the manufacturing industry. In Italy, manufacturing was hit particularly hard by the COVID pandemic. It’s fantastic to see that output has now returned and exceeded 2019 levels. All in all, 2022 looks like a healthy, positive year for manufacturing despite some issues presenting themselves around component shortages.

One thing I did notice was that we heard little in the way of big new product launches. This may be down to the ongoing shortages of components making it difficult to supply new product launches. However it may also simply be a case of companies holding back on product launches until the much larger SPS Nuremberg event in November. We look forward to attending the Nuremberg show and, if Parma is anything to go by, it will be an event to remember!