Local Production or Shipping from Turkey for a Fair Abroad: What the Decision Depends On

Whether the parts of a stand for a fair abroad are prepared in Turkey or in the fair’s own country, or which part is prepared where, depends not on a single factor but on the factors below considered together. Both routes are handled as part of the project’s logistics planning, and the assessment is made separately for each project. Two of the factors, the venue’s rules and customs procedures, are given below with their sources.

What goes into the calculation

• The type, number and volume or weight of the parts
• Delivery and installation time
• Whether the stand will be reused at later fairs
• The rules of the venue and organiser
• Customs procedures
• Installation-day access and placement arrangements
• A combined comparison of production, transport and customs cost items

Venue rules

Loading, unloading and moving goods to the stand within the grounds depend on the organiser’s contracted companies. At Hannover, cranes and forklifts are used only through forwarders approved by Deutsche Messe; the choice of the forwarder that brings the goods to the site is not bound by that rule (Deutsche Messe, Information for exhibitors A-Z ↗). At Cologne, only Koelnmesse’s contract partners use cranes and similar equipment (Koelnmesse Technical Guidelines, section 5.12 ↗). These rules enter the logistics planning from the start, when deciding where the parts will be prepared.

Transport and customs for parts prepared in Turkey

At Cologne, Koelnmesse recommends that customs formalities are handled by the contract carrier; goods from abroad need three copies of a proforma invoice in German (same Koelnmesse document, section 5.12). If the parts are prepared in Turkey, transport and customs formalities are followed as part of the project’s logistics planning. For parts prepared in the fair’s own country this customs step does not arise, so the two routes are compared part by part, using the factors above.