Hannover. This year LIGNA, the world's leading tradeshow for wood processing and woodworking machinery, plant and tools, featured 1,552 exhibitors – including 56 percent from outside Germany – and occupied 121,195 square meters (1,304,530 sq. ft) of net display space. The top exhibiting nations included Germany, Italy, Austria, China, Sweden and the USA. The show attracted some 93,099 visitors, 40 percent of whom were from abroad. The visitors leveraged the show to survey the latest innovations in their industry and initiate extensive investment in new technology.

"Exhibitor feedback points to outstanding business dialogue, promising leads and strong international growth. For us and our partner, the German Woodworking Machinery Manufacturers' Association, this provides a good basis upon which to introduce a number of structural changes for the upcoming LIGNA season," said Christian Pfeiffer, the Director in charge of LIGNA at Deutsche Messe.

LIGNA, which is held at the Hannover Exhibition Center in Hannover, Germany, next runs from 22 to 26 May 2017. The upcoming season will continue LIGNA's long-standing commitment to presenting future-defining solutions and innovative production equipment for the wood industry – albeit with a revamped layout that will boost efficiency for all trade visitors and provide a more comprehensive, user-centric overview of all key technologies.

The new layout will comprise seven main display categories:

The move to merge the "Solid Wood Processing", "Furniture Industry" and "Woodcrafts" (skilled woodworking trades) categories into a new "Tools and Machinery for Custom and Mass Production" category, in particular, has already met with very positive industry feedback. The new category will present the constituent technologies in an integrated manner that more accurately reflects the way in which they are used by their target markets. By clustering allied technologies, the change will shorten visitors' walking distances between relevant displays and generate synergies with newly created neighboring display areas.

Another change relates to automation technology/machine components and surface technology. These two technology categories have grown in importance at LIGNA over the years and will therefore have their own centrally located display areas from 2017 on.

"The new layout reflects changes in the way technologies are used by our target market. The market for woodworking and processing machines is no longer strictly segmented according to user scale or size, and technology types that were once distinct are now converging. We want to provide a more efficient trade fair experience for all the professionals in attendance by enabling them to move quickly and conveniently between exhibitors of relevance to them. The new layout has been very well received by our exhibitors. In fact, many have already registered for 2017 in order to secure their preferred locations at the show. We therefore urge companies thinking about exhibiting at LIGNA 2017 to register now in order to avoid disappointment," remarked Pfeiffer.