Australian Manufacturing Week to be moved to Sydney in June

On Friday AMTIL announced changes to the schedule for next year’s Australian Manufacturing Week (AMW) exhibition, relocating and rescheduling the event from Melbourne in March to Sydney in June.

The AMTIL Board has decided not to proceed with the AMW 2022 exhibition that had been scheduled to take place at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre (MCEC) from 8–11 March 2022. The decision was taken in response to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak in Victoria and the resultant uncertainty over the viability of large public events so early in 2022.

“The AMTIL Board met last week and made the very difficult decision not to proceed with the show in its current March 2022 timeslot,” said Shane Infanti, Chief Executive Officer of AMTIL. “Despite the great support we have for the exhibition from all our exhibitors, recent developments relating to the COVID-19 Delta strain have created an unpredictable environment that we felt had the potential to seriously jeopardise the event given that it is so early in the New Year.”

With the Melbourne event not going ahead, AMTIL is now moving forward with plans for a rescheduled event to take place later in the year in a different location. A venue has been secured to hold AMW from 7–10 June 2022 — the International Convention Centre Sydney (ICC Sydney). AMTIL is confident that by June the current COVID-19 outbreak will have been contained, and high vaccination levels will allow the staging of large public events.

Infanti explained: “The AMTIL Board felt that the return of exhibitions is an important step in our COVID recovery plan and that there remains a very strong appetite for a show at some stage in 2022,” Infanti said. “We explored a number of options in regard to shows over the coming two years.

“Running AMW in June at the ICC Darling Harbour would represent a return to Sydney since we last ran Austech there in 2012, and reflects strong local demand for a significant manufacturing event. We are confident that the COVID-19 implications for an event mid next year will be minimal.”

Looking further ahead, AMW 2023 will also take place in its usual May timeslot in Melbourne, running from 9–12 May 2023 at the MCEC.

“This is planned to be one of the largest exhibitions of its type in the Southern Hemisphere,” Infanti said. “We are truly excited to be bringing this to the Australian manufacturing sector. For both of these events, the industry can be confident of receiving the same great support and service that manufacturers have come to expect from AMTIL over 20-plus years of running trade shows.”