Trade show report: LogiMAT, Stuttgart, Germany May 31-Jun 2, 2022
With 1,571 exhibitors across 10 exhibition halls, LogiMAT is probably the largest single trade show STIQ has visited to date, in 2022.
Note: On June 3rd we realised that three days may not have been enough. However, we met numerous new companies and plenty of people that we had only talked to via video conferencing. All in all, it was a successful visit even though we had to leave early on the last day to catch the car train at Calais. Yes, we drove from London to Stuttgart.
Note that LogiMAT 2023 will take place April 25-27th. We have already made plans.
Here follows a few of the highlights:
The main entrance at Messe Stuttgart
The walk from the airport to Messe Stuttgart is very well displayed and it is impossible to get to the wrong location. Our wish is that other conference & trade show venues would have a very similar signage procedure. Loads of people at 8am on May 31st - 1hr before the doors open to the public.
Note that whilst there were multiple types of warehouse automation equipment & software on display, our main interest was in the robotics companies.
Chinese vendor, Youibot working on their display
Pentanova have now also added a low form factor forklift to their ranges.
Fraunhofer Institute is well known for its robotics work. Not entirely sure how commercial this particular robot is, but perhaps they just showcased some of their technological advances.
Vanderlande showcased an AMR at the show. We also met up with their parent company, Toyota Material Handling at the show although they did not exhibit.
Italian Robopac / OCME showcasing an AMR and their packaging solution. Quite a few pallet wrapping companies have developed and added AMRs to their ranges in recent year, much thanks to AMR navigation solution vendors.
Koerber announced a partnership with Attabotics at LogiMAT. This was a bit surprising to us at STIQ, but might make sense in the near future if there are deployments announced. Note that Attabotics did not have their own stand at LogiMAT 2022 and were not present at Modex 2022.
Agilox certainly drew an audience for their new OCF forklift. We tried to get a better image, but it felt like a busy night in the pub trying to get through to the bar to order drinks... Agilox announced a partnership with Bosch which was quite interesting and may drive the fortunes of the company. Whether this was driven by necessity by Agilox's investors or not... we guess time will tell. Our current view is that Bosch definitely made a good deal.
Storojet does not seem to get much public stage space, but this may have to do with the parent company, ICO having other priorities. If they were a startup there would perhaps been more focus on them. Why is Storojet a great product? Contact them to find out.
MIR (Mobile Industrial Robots) owner by Terradyne Inc., exhibited in the hallway between the exhibiting halls. Slick as usual but nothing new.
Scallog is a French vendor of G2P AGV solutions and showcased their ranges.
Exotec was also on location having raised $335m earlier in 2022 from Goldman Sachs.
Plenty of Chinese exhibitors despite the quarantine requirements on their return to China. Libiao Robotics produce a value range of sortation robots.
Jungheinrich has been vocal with their deal making recently. They invested in Magazino (imaged) and acquired Arculus recently. They also released their new Powercube, a product we did not get the opportunity to see at LogiMAT... we will get back to you on this!
Turkey has produced a number of robotics companies. Tarqan is the brainchild of OPLOG, a Turkish 3PL, currently with operations in Germany. This is a G2P AGV solution that looked very good - under the green cover in this image, taken before public opening.
Like the EvoCortex, there were plenty of smaller AGV/AMR vendors at LogiMAT. This particular robot was interesting for its use of radar sensors.
Quicktron is another Chinese vendor. This particular vendor received investment from KION and have set up offices in Germany. The range is also sold via Dematic.
Continental showed off their robotics ranges including their mobile robot.
For sheer stand design, Packsize took the... box? Great creative stand. Not sure how helpful it was to the people on the stand, but we definitely liked it. Thumbs up to the Packsize events team.
Noyes Technologies finally released the design of their storage solution. This is version 3 and apparently they already work on version 5. This looked interesting, but perhaps we were expecting more technological advances - perhaps these are hidden inside? This is a 'value solution' targeting the Micro Fulfilment Centre market and the Q-Commerce space.
Videos
We did an early morning walkthrough of Hall 2 at LogiMAT. This hall had a very high proportion of mobile robots.
Notice - we will improve our commentary in future videos :)
Rocket Solution also showed off their high density quadruple deep ASRS Shuttle solution. This was tucked away on the first floor in Hall 1 and we so nearly missed this...
Siemens showcased a robot picking solution. Will they offer an advanced version of this to compete with RightHand, Covariant, NoMagic, etc?
Verdict
LogiMAT should be on every intralogistics person's trade show calendar. STIQ has already booked flights and hotel for the 2023 version (less than a week after the 2022 show). We recommend you do the same as quite a few of the hotels were already sold out.
NOTE - this blog post is work in progress. We took 100's of images at the show and are sifting through for more content to go up! Re-visit shortly...