Project Marble Eurasia Natural Stone Marble Projects and Technologies Fair, sponsored by the Istanbul Mineral Exporters’ Association (İMİB) and organized by the Pyramids Group, was held at the Istanbul Expo Center between 23-26 August 2017. On the first day, the fair, was very active with the effect of the visits of the purchase delegation. However, the vitality of the fair disappeared with the departure of the delegation, which completed the negotiations. So the purchase committee is gone, we the fair is over.
The biggest Supporter is Kahyaoğlu
The natural stone sector has been discussing about the need for new sectoral fairs for many years. As such, many people objected to the Project Marble Eurasia Fair, from the very first moment. There were supporters of the Fair as well. Perhaps the greatest supporter of this fair was Ali Kahyaoğlu, the former president of IMİB. Because Kahyaoğlu did not see the support that he expected from some of the members of the board of directors in the exhibition process, and expressed this on every platform. Kahyaoğlu, who has made great efforts to realize the fair successfully and to increase the number of participants, had invited the sector to participate the fair by saying: “We highlighted the service quality instead of making money while organizing this fair. We equalized Euro with TL. Although the m2 price for same size of stands were 125 Euro in similar fairs, we kept it as 125 TL. We will gather nearly 500 purchase delegations from more than 40 countries.”
“We struggled hard”
And the Project Marble Eurasia Fair, which was highly supported by Ali Kahyaoğlu, opened its doors to the whole sector on 23rd of August in 2017. İMİB President Ali Kahyaoglu, pointed out that the Istanbul Project Marble Eurasia Fair did not even get the support of the management board of İMİB during the opening speech of the fair and said: “We struggled so hard to realize this fair. There were so many obstacles. Even the management board of İMİB struggled against me to avoid this fair. They blamed me to invite purchase delegations on the grounds that they will come here only for leisure. However, we are killing three birds with one stone. Our aim is to not only sell marble and marble machines to incoming foreign buyers. We will certainly make them visit the historical and touristic places of Istanbul and host them in the Bosporus for two nights. They will not only buy marble, but also know Istanbul well. I hope the fair will be fully booked in 2018. We have already had a request for the expansion of the area.”
Support every activity for the promotion of natural stone
Turkish Marble Mining Foundation President Ersoy Erol said: “It is not necessary to discuss the necessity of a second fair in Turkey, which has 40 percent of the world’s natural stone reserves. Our country, which has a rich potential in terms of natural stone, has 4 billion m3 processible marble, 2,8 billion m3 processible travertine and 1 billion m3 of granite reserves. Thus, we should not discuss the necessity of a second fair in our country, which has 40% of world’s natural stone reserves. We declared 2017 as “’Turkish Natural Stones Promotion Year’. In this context, it is necessary to support every activity carried out to introduce our natural stone to the world. We will continue to introduce the forestation project of the abandoned marble fields of the Türk Marble Mining Foundation during the fair. In this context, we offered each participant “saplings”.
The fair, which ends on the day it started
The fair, where 121 companies in total exhibited their products, was busy on the first day due to the visit of the purchase delegation. Especially the visitors from China, India and Arab countries added vitality to the first day. However, we will not be able to say that the activity on the first day of the fair continued on other days. The number of visitors on the stands had gradually decreased since the second day of the fair.
Thanks message
According to the agreements we made with the fair organization company, we planned to distribute our magazines in the foyer as Turkish Stone World Magazine. However, due to the disagreement we had with the fair organization company, we could not participate with a proper stand. We would like to thank Ersoy Erol, the Chairman of Turkish Marble Mining Foundation and his team for their support and for letting us share his stand with us.
+90 532 585 51 95
+90 532 585 51 95