First the pandemic pushed the Carrefour International du Bois (CIB) exhibition back from its scheduled May 2020 slot to February 2021. A further wave of Covid-19 infection in France led to a further delay to May. But finally the organisers bowed to the inevitable and cancelled, announcing that the next show would take place from June 1-3, 2022.
“Underlining the commitment to run the show in 2021, everything was prepared; the venue, the Parc Beaujoire in Nantes, was paid for, the visitors guide was printed. We were ready to go,” said CIB international executive Samantha Padden. “But the French pandemic social distancing rules made it impossible. It meant contacting every one of the more than 550 exhibitors and, as we have become a close community over the years, we phoned rather than send impersonal emails. People were incredibly understanding, but it was still an emotional roller coaster. Cancelling the show for the first time in 30 years was traumatic.”
Once over the shock and complex process of cancellation, however, organisers Atlanbois started to look forward to the next event – and there’s clear confidence about the future and the show’s prospects for continued growth and development. The optimism is partly down to its global reputation. It’s now billed as Europe’s leading timber-only trade fair – a claim substantiated by the fact that the last show in 2018 attracted visitors and exhibitors from 85 countries. The positivity is also attributed to the supportive response of the Carrefour community when it had to be called off. Then there’s the event’s history and heritage to draw on.
The CIB was started in 1990 as an annual one-day conference and round table by Atlanbois, the regional timber trade association. While it addressed local and French national issues, it also had an international flavour from the outset. At the time, the port of Nantes and nearby Saint Nazaire were leading wood import hubs, plugged into the global trading network.
“Nantes was particularly important for the tropical trade and from the early days the Carrefour attracted international attendees,” said Ms Padden.
As the event became established, companies asked if they could have a promotional presence, with small stands alongside the conference. This, in turn gathered momentum and by 1994 CIB had very much become a conference with an exhibition attached and it had to relocate from its original Hôtel de Région venue in Nantes to the bigger Cité de Congrès.
“By 1998, and now biennial, we had 200 exhibitors and had become a trade fair complemented by a conference,” said Ms Padden. “For the next show in 2000 we had to move to the Parc Beaujoire, which has been our venue ever since.”
The rest is history. Each show attracted more exhibitors, compelling it to take more and more space in the fair complex, with 2018 topping 560 exhibitors, while attendance was a record 11,500, up 10% on 2016. International representation was also the greatest yet, with 37% of exhibitors and 29% of visitors coming from outside France – and the UK accounted for the fifth largest contingent of the latter.
Ms Padden attributes the continuing evolution of the CIB down to a range of factors. They include word-of-mouth and targeted marketing “cross-referencing exhibitor and visitor databases to match buyers with suppliers”.
“Growing confidence and interest in wood as a high performance material and a low carbon solution in an increasingly environmentally aware European market, particularly in construction, have also played a part,” she said.
But primarily, CIB puts its continued success down to the fact that it has retained its original formula, as an exclusively timber and wood products event. There are no time-wasting distractions for the timber supplier or buyer.
“Exhibitors can be confident visitors are there to do business and buy timber and wood products, while visitors know they’ll have a focused experience and find what they’re looking for,” said Ms Padden. “It does mean that we actually have to turn some exhibitors away who we don’t feel are right for the show.”
Being a timber only event has also led to the CIB becoming a trade forum in the true sense of the word; a place where business is done – and interestingly a significant percentage of trade concluded at the event is exhibitor to exhibitor, according to Ms Padden – and where key industry developments and topics are discussed.
But being timber only doesn’t mean the exhibition hasn’t evolved. It has also responded to market developments with perhaps the key move coming in 2006 with the launch of the Timber Techniques & Solutions Area (TSB) exhibition-within-an-exhibition, focused on timber in construction.
“Interest in timber building was growing and, with increasing pressure to reduce the carbon footprint of construction, clearly had a bright future,” said Ms Padden. “And since we launched the Timber Techniques & Solutions Area it has advanced spectacularly worldwide.”
The TSB hall features everything from engineered timber products, to wood-based insulation and whole build systems. In a departure from CIB tradition, it also includes associated products, although only those considered vital for wood building, such as fixings, hangers and construction membranes.
As the Timber Techniques and Solutions Area grew, attracting growing numbers of architects, designers and engineers to the show, so timber in construction has become a key topic of CIB conferences and seminars, which run throughout the three-day show. The speaker line-ups have included leading timber-oriented designers and architects from around the world.
For the international visitor, the CIB also provides a window into the French timber industry, one of the biggest and most innovative globally. It includes new product showcases and has featured special displays on industry initiatives such as the Pour moi, c’est le bois (For me it’s wood) promotional campaign and the ongoing Adivbois public-private sector timber building programme.
The 2022 show will be the penultimate event before the Paris 2024 Olympics. Wood is already set to feature extensively in Olympics developments and there’s an industry campaign, France Bois 2024, to promote use of more. While it’s not definitely planned yet, Ms Padden says the role of timber at the Games is likely to be one of the topics of interest for the show conferences in 2022. The reconstruction of Notre Dame and its use of thousands of cubic metres of French oak is another possible focus.
The organisers are upbeat about prospects for next year’s show.
“It’s been a difficult and challenging time for everyone,” said Ms Padden. “But we’re already getting advance interest from exhibitors and visitors, and many of the exhibitors booked in for 2020 told us to hang on to their stands for 2022.
We think by then people will be really eager for the sort of business encounters only a live, face-to-face exhibition can bring.”
