The highly successful Third China Maritime Exhibition took place in Hong Kong from March 15-18, 2010.
More than 2,500 industry representatives from more than 35 countries attended China Maritime 2010, including some 800 senior executives from international ship owning companies and another 800 representatives from ship design firms, shipbuilders and suppliers to the region's shipbuilding industry.
China Maritime 2010 was carefully timed to bring focus to a busy and exciting week of significant regional maritime industry events staged in Hong Kong at a moment when the world's most important maritime industry tentatively commences its return to full activity.
The flotilla of industry events commenced with an exciting harbour cruise on Monday, March 15, organised by the Hong Kong Marine Department.
China Maritime 2010 was officially opened on the morning of Tuesday March 16 with an address by Mr Kenneth Koo, Chairman of the Hong Kong Shipowners Association in the presence of Mr Roger Tupper, JP Director of the Hong Kong Marine Department and Ms Doris Cheung, Deputy Secretary for Transport, Hong Kong.
"Change is inevitable," said Mr Koo during his opening address. "The change that the world is presently going through will bring with it some very new challenges and opportunities."
As usual, visitors were entertained by a Chinese lion dance at the beginning of China Maritime. This traditional dance of good luck and prosperity began when Mr Koo dotted the eyes of the lion, giving the colourful lion its vision.
Baird Events' Chairman, Neil Baird, together with Ms Cheung, Mr Koo and Mr Tupper, then symbolically cut the ribbon to the entrance of the exhibition hall, and officially opened China Maritime to all visitors.
Following the ceremony, exhibitors at China Maritime 2010 gave a series of informative product presentation seminars throughout the day, with varied and interesting presentations from Medscreen-Concateno, Harwood Marine, Germanischer Lloyd and Dometic Hong Kong.
Also on Tuesday, Marine Money Asia staged the Third Annual Greater China Shipping Finance, Strategy and Investment Forum titled, "When Opportunity Knocks" – a forum generally held to be of the highest quality by those lucky enough to attend.
On Tuesday evening a special China Maritime cocktail reception, sponsored by Castrol Marine, took place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Due to Castrol's parallel role as official sponsor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the reception's 150 guests were treated to an appearance by England and Manchester United football legend Bryan Robson in an entertaining and novel industry crossover.
On Wednesday morning the Hong Kong Shipowners' Association, in conjunction with China Maritime, staged an important forum titled, "Adapting to a Different Future", addressing in detail the changing nature of business conditions and the ramifications for the shipping industry.
The HKSOA forum was followed by a delightful lunch sponsored by Det Norske Veritas, offering guests a further opportunity to cement relationships and discuss the implications of the prior forum. A fascinating address was given at the lunch by guest speaker Doug Woodring of Project Kaisei who described his experience of investigating the North Pacific Gyre, making suggestions as to how this enormous mess of plastic and other land-sourced garbage can be removed.
Also on Wednesday, China Maritime staged product presentations from the Brigantine Group and Maris Asia Pacific, both of which distinctly concerned themselves with cleaner, greener shipping practices and technologies.
The "cleaner shipping" theme was carried through to Thursday morning's China Maritime presentations, which formed a mini-conference on environmentally smarter shipping, with seminars from Hong Kong International Coastal Cleanup and Designing Hong Hong.
Thursday afternoon featured a brilliant series of highly professional and highly effective presentations from four representatives of Wärtsilä (Switzerland and China), attracting some 80 attendees.Finally, to cap off the Week, the Hong Kong Ship Owners Association, together with the Marine Department of Hong Kong, presented a "Year of the Seafarer" awards luncheon for the maritime industry on Friday, March 19.
According to Neil Baird, Chairman of Baird Events, the 2010 China Maritime event was an outstanding success, marked in particular by the high quality and range of activities as well as the high calibre of exhibitors and attendees.
"We are extremely pleased at the outcome for China Maritime which has now, in its third edition, matured into a very high quality event and a truly dynamic industry marketplace, staged in the regional heart of the modern shipping and shipbuilding industries.
"Baird Events always strives towards delivering the highest-quality information, activities, presentations and opportunities for networking and direct sales and, in this sense, China Maritime has become our flagship event.
"We are already fielding many booking enquiries for China Maritime 2012 and look forward greatly to delivering the fourth edition of this dynamic event," said Mr Baird.