BAU 2017 fair turned out to be the meeting point of Estonian construction sector
Munich based construction fair BAU that ended last week gave the wooden houses sector a thorough overview of Europe’ s construction sector’ s latest trends. The fair was about architecture and engineering of buildings, introduced new building technologies, tools, new materials and building components that enable to build and do interior works on industrial buildings, administrative spaces and private homes more efficiently.
The fair is considered to be one of the most important ones in the world in its field. There were more than 2000 participants from 42 countries at the fair in 2015 and more than a quarter of a million visitors attended. This year a 26 member Estonian Wooden Houses Cluster’ s delegation visited the fair as well and 4 Estonian wooden houses producers were represented at the joint stand organized by Enterprise Estonia. The attending producers at the joint stand included Nordic Houses KT OÜ, Palmatin OÜ, Ritsu AS and Puitpaneel OÜ.
According to Raiko Gustavson, Chairman of the Board of Pärnu Log Homes OÜ and a member of the Estonian Wooden Houses Cluster, said that BAU is not a construction fair introducing only the German market. „For us it was important firstly to see the development of local businesses and the new products. As a third of exponents were from outside of Germany we also took an opportunity to get to know our closest competitors.“
Janek Paabut, Member of the Board of Puitpaneel OÜ, who introduced wooden element and modular houses at the fair, sees Germany as the next export market for their company. „German home building potential is extremely high for our producers. Germany produces wooden houses for more than 1,8 billion euros a year.“ Paabut also brings forward an extremely high international level of the fair: „We estimate that at least 60% of the visitors were from foreign countries which enabled us to discuss potential co-operation with partners from at least 10 different countries.“
Lauri Kivil, the leader of the Estonian Wooden Houses Cluster delegation said that BAU turned out to be the meeting point of Estonian construction sector and there were quite a few Estonian speaking guests at the fair grounds. Lauri Kivil: „Our delegation had 26 members yet after the fair we organized a common dinner and had nearly 70 representatives of Estonian wooden houses sector at the table.“ According to Kivil this illustrates quite well the close co-operation and networking of the sector as well as stresses the importance of the fair for Estonian wooden houses sector companies.
The fair visit was funded by the project of the Cluster of companies exporting Estonian wooden houses, supported by Enterprise Estonia’ s cluster development program, funded by European Regional Development Fund.
