After the COVID-19 situation eased in many places towards the end of summer and contact rules and travel restrictions were eased or lifted completely, the entire sector, and therefore also the trade fair and event industry, were looking ahead to a new start: “It wasn’t exactly “business as usual”, but we were hoping that there wouldn’t be a second lockdown,” says Olaf Schmidt, Vice President of Textiles & Textile Technologies at Messe Frankfurt. “But this is precisely the scenario we are faced with now and of course had to make a decision to protect the health and safety our exhibitors, visitors and also our employees.” Due to rapidly increasing infection rates and the latest decisions made by the German government, the organisers have been left with no choice but to cancel the winter edition of Neonyt.

But the sustainability community doesn’t have to forgo Neonyt completely. “The need of our exhibitors and visitors to interact and cooperate in person has only increased during the past few months,” says Thimo Schwenzfeier, Show Director of Neonyt. “A need that, after a forced one-year break, we would have loved to fulfil with a face-to-face event, but now we are having to do that virtually and in a reduced form.”