Busworld organised its very first edition of Busworld Latin America, at Plaza Mayor in Medellin, the second biggest city in Colombia, during December 5-7, 2016. With 61 exhibitors coming from 16 different, the event had 2,640 trade visitors.
In total, 32 vehicles were presented on a total surface of 6,600 sq.m. by Daimler, Scania, GM Isuzu, Busscar, Volvo, Golden Dragon, Inconcar, Megabuses, Otokar, Carrocerias JGB, Dina, Orion, Agrale, NPU, etc.
Scania launched a world premiere, the first bi-articulated bus powered by a euro VI CNG engine; Isuzu presented the ERGA CNG bus with low entry; Marcopolo did not have a dedicated booth, but was present via other vehicles in the exhibition, like the eco version of the Gran Viale of Mercedes-Benz, Megabuses presented its midi-buses Megax and Megax Uno, Inconcar chose to show the Dreamliner, Carrocerias JGB brought its Majestic double decker and Daimler was drawing a lot of attention with a rotating chassis at its booth.
Also from the suppliers’ and accessories’ side, important names like Fasching, Hanover Displays, Voith, Funtoro, Aesys, Songz, Janlir, Actia, Dhollandia, Soltecmo, Transtec, Allison Transmission, Espumatec Upic, Good luck, Faicsa, Jaque, Sunviautoand many more presented their latest products.
All exhibitors, both vehicle manufacturers and suppliers, expressed their satisfaction with the quality of the visitors. They all made some good deals at the exhibition or have some interesting leads to continue to work on afterwards.
Since Busworld International’s headquarters is located in Belgium, the Busworld team was honoured to welcome the Belgian Federal Minister of Mobility, François Bellot, at their exhibition. The minister opened the exhibition and also took the stand during the Busworld Academy Congress. He was amazed by the high level of intermodality that the City of Medellin achieved with its multi-modal system, combining buses, the Metroplus BRT, taxis, trams and even the metrocables. No wonder Medellin received the Sustainable Transport Award in 2012.
As usual, the conference programme next to the Busworld exhibition was hosted by Busworld Academy. The ‘Future Oriented Bus & Coach Transport in Latin America’ congress addressed different topics such as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and integrated multi modal public transport, zero emission buses, safety in bus and coach and last but not least coach tourism. The conference was very well attended, each of the sessions had a full room of participants. Jan Deman, Director of Busworld Academy, was very pleased. “We even got requests to repeat the same congress in the neighbouring countries!”, he added. All presentations are available on the Busworld Academy website.
Based on these experiences, Busworld decided to organise the next Busworld Latin America already in the coming year, 2017. The exact dates will be communicated as soon as possible. The location will remain the same: Plaza Mayor exhibition center in Medellin, the city of multi modal public transport.