NFPA Promotes U.S. Fluid Power Industry

By Eric Lanke
NFPA President/CEO

At our recent Annual Conference in Laguna Beach, California, I shared the key ways NFPA is fulfilling its mission to strengthen the fluid power industry. In this, the third of four NFPA News posts, I’d like to share some of the things I said regarding NFPA’s third strategic objective: Providing our members with opportunities and resources to better showcase their companies and their products.

IFPE

IFPE, the premiere trade show and technical conference for fluid power, remains our best opportunity for members to showcase their companies and products.

IFPE 2017 broke another set of records – with 494 exhibitors renting more than 169,000 square feet of exhibit space. But perhaps more importantly, we leveraged RFID chip technology at the show to definitively document that more than 50,000 people were on the IFPE show floor. And, significantly, more than 9,000 of these people were not show attendees at all – they were CONEXPO exhibitors – personnel from the very OEMs and customers that are squarely in one of fluid power’s core customer markets. Those new metrics clearly demonstrate the value of this show for our industry.

IFPE 2020 is coming up next March. We already have 340 exhibitors signed up, which puts us squarely on our 2017 sales pace. Many of those exhibitors are reserving even bigger booths than they did in 2017.

[icon pic=”arrow-right”] Click here for more information on IFPE 2020.

Motion + Power Technology Expo

As beneficial as IFPE is, I hope everyone knows that NFPA is supporting a second trade show opportunity for our members – the Motion + Power Technology Expo.

This is a multi-technology show sponsored by NFPA with the American Gear Manufacturers Association and supported by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association and the American Bearing Manufacturers Association. These four organizations recognize that the motion and power marketplace is increasingly driven by multi-technology solutions – and that no one technology choice can currently reign supreme over the others.

We believe that a single show where all these technologies – fluid power, electrical actuation, and gears – can be showcased will be a powerful draw for mobile and industrial OEMs looking for motion and power solutions. Especially for our industrial-facing members, it’s a unique opportunity to promote themselves to a new crop of customers.

The first incarnation of Motion + Power Technology Expo is being built on the footprint of AGMA’s GearExpo and will be held in Detroit on October 15-17, 2019. Fifteen NFPA members are already signed up to exhibit there, and there is still time to apply for your booth space.

[icon pic=”arrow-right”] Click here for more information on the Motion + Power Technology Expo.

Annual Report on the U.S. Fluid Power Industry

Every year, NFPA now publishes an Annual Report on the U.S. Fluid Power Industry. It’s designed to be a promotional tool that both NFPA and our members can use to help promote the industry and its technology to broader audiences.

We know that fluid power is a workhorse of the U.S. economy – a cross-cutting technology of choice for dozens of industries and hundreds of applications. But too much of the rest of the world doesn’t.

This Annual Report is therefore a handy guide, providing an overview of the size and economic impact of our industry, as well as exploring current best practices and future directions of our technology.

And now, NFPA is offering to give custom presentations based on the report’s content at meetings and conferences of its members and related organizations. I’ve done several of these events already and look forward to doing more as the requests come in.

Through this mechanism, NFPA and its members can work together to help spread powerful and positive information about our industry.

[icon pic=”arrow-right”] Click here to download the current Annual Report on the U.S. Fluid Power Industry. An updated version will be available in July.

IFPE, MPT Expo, and the Annual Report on the U.S. Fluid Power Industry are just three ways that we can help our members promote fluid power, giving them opportunities and resources to better showcase their companies and their products. If you have any questions, please contact me at elanke@nfpa.com or (414) 778-3351.