Strategic procurement management is facing an extremely complex challenge - not least because of the new supply chain law for German companies from 2023. HANNOVER MESSE 2023, as a hotspot for global sourcing, will make a decisive contribution to successfully meeting this challenge.

For decades, HANNOVER MESSE has enjoyed the reputation of being the world's most important industrial trade fair. Traditionally, several thousand exhibitors from all corners of the globe gather in Hannover every spring to present innovations and news from the capital goods sector. A distinctive feature and further expression of the international character of every HANNOVER MESSE is the respective cooperation with a partner country. In recent years, these have included the USA, Poland, Mexico and Portugal, and in 2023 it will be Indonesia.

Change as a constant

But HANNOVER MESSE is also subject to change. Some former components of HANNOVER MESSE have split off and become independent trade shows, but new or strengthened areas have more than compensated for these gaps. The term Industry 4.0, which has been hovering over everything for some years now, and the accompanying digital transformation of broad sectors of industry, now essentially shape the character of the trade fair. Of course, the pandemic has left its mark, as it has almost everywhere, and the negative effects threaten to find their seamless continuation in the energy crisis induced by the Ukraine war.

Supply chains have rust

A major factor of the world's increased prosperity in recent decades, especially in the Western and Asian economies, has been globalization, the hardly limited and mostly inexpensive availability of energy, of raw materials and of cheap labor. These aspects in particular have suffered massively recently, not only are energy costs threatening to explode, but the supply chains stretched around the globe are also weakening to an extent hardly thought possible until recently.

There are initial voices that see this as a permanent shift away from the proven principle of global sourcing, i.e. the worldwide availability and procurement of raw materials and goods, and toward more old-style local sourcing. Even the expert and long-time advocate of global sourcing, Wilfried Krokowski, Managing Director of Global Procurement Services, is now skeptical about the prospects of a global economic policy that is open to the world.

Looking ahead

Alone, such a development can neither be in the interest of the partners involved so far in the basically well-oiled machinery of global trade, nor are the prospects convincing that an industry thrown back on regional possibilities alone could expect, at least in the short term. It is therefore more than understandable that HANNOVER MESSE 2023 does not even begin to question its international orientation. The proportion of international visitors alone was recently just under one third. Among the exhibitors themselves, more than half come from abroad. And in 2023, the international character of HANNOVER MESSE will again be a decisive factor in developing new strategies for procurement management that are adapted to the current situation.

International networking

At "Global Business & Markets", the world's largest special platform for presenting skills and services during HANNOVER MESSE 2023, entrepreneurs from all over the world will exchange ideas and experiences in the focus of global trade and business media. This is where projects continue to be driven forward unflinchingly, where decision-makers from politics and industry come into contact. In addition, there is the so-called Investment Lounge - where networking also takes place to promote foreign projects, stimulate financing and dismantle trade barriers.

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