Spain: a well-kept woodworking industry secret.

Even though business travel is not always fun and trade shows can be a grind, I've always considered the opportunity to visit international woodworking fairs to be a perk. That's a good thing, considering I have covered more than my fair share of shows for Wood & Wood Products these last 20 years, stretching from Hanover, Germany, to Nagoya, Japan and from Guadalajara, Mexico, to Montreal, Canada.

My latest international woodworking show assignment took me to Valencia, Spain, for the 32nd FIMMA-MADERALIA Fair, held Nov. 9-12. All I knew about the show as I boarded an Iberia jet in Chicago was what John Zinn, former senior vice president of the International Woodworking Machinery & Furniture Supply Fair, had told me a few years ago--that it is big. I didn't appreciate how big, though, until actually entering the massive and modern Feria Valencia building and seeing the exhibition with my own eyes.

FIMMA, short for International Fair of Woodworking Machinery, and MADERALIA, which stands for International Suppliers Fair for Furniture and Wood Industry, are separately sponsored, co-located events. According to the biennial fair's officials, 46,851 people registered as visitors or exhibitors for this year's event, an increase of 5 percent over 2003. Ninety percent of the participants hailed from Spain. The two shows featured 1,289 exhibiting companies spread out in 12 pavilions on three levels of the Feria Valencia.

To put things in perspective, consider that FIMMA-MADERALIA's attendance and exhibitor figures are on par with IWF, the premiere woodworking show of the Western Hemisphere. Those numbers become all the more impressive when one considers that Spain, with a population of approximately 42 million, has about 15 percent as many people as the United States.

No. 3 in Europe

Not only does Spain host Europe's third largest woodworking exhibition, after those in Hanover and Milan, its woodworking machinery sector is the Old World's third largest, albeit a distant third, to those of Germany and Italy.

AFEMMA, the Spanish woodworking association, claims that its 93 members represent about 90 percent of the national production of woodworking machines and tools. Of the two dozen companies I personally visited during FIMMA-MADERALIA, only a few have a long-established presence in the U.S. market, including Cehisa, a manufacturer of edgebanders, and Barberan, which makes profile laminating equipment.

Most of the representatives of the Spanish woodworking machinery companies I met with said they would like to export more products to the United States. The biggest stumbling block facing Spanish woodworking machinery manufacturers is finding distributors to handle their lines. Their options are severely limited because most of the major national and regional U.S. woodworking distributors already have commitments with U.S., German and Italian manufacturers.

Some of the more determined Spanish woodworking machinery companies say they plan to slowly, but surely, work their way into the U.S. marketplace, which they recognize as a great growth opportunity. A handful of them will exhibit at IWF 2006, Aug. 23-26, in Atlanta.

Spain's Rising Economy

At the same time the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and many other European Union countries are singing the economic blues, Spain's economy is going strong.

Walking the streets of Valencia, a culturally enriched city of more than 760,000 people, one can see construction cranes jutting up along the skyline in almost every direction.

Surprisingly, despite the size of FIMMA-MADERALIA and the growing Spanish economy, the American presence at the exhibition was paltry. IWF sent a pair of personnel, but no U.S. woodworking machinery and tooling manufacturers were represented. The only U.S. firm on the supply side was Northwest Hardwoods.

Global-minded equipment and supply manufacturers might be missing an opportunity.

RELATED ARTICLE: Crosscut before roasting.

"Hello, Rich. This is Jerry," said the caller,

I was caught off guard. Who was this Jerry calling me at 8 o'clock on a Monday morning before I've had my second cup of coffee?

"It's Jaroslaw Kanas," he added, before I even had a chance to ask.

Ah ha! It was that Jerry, the guy who once lived three miles from me on Chicago's North side and now was back in his native Poland working for a woodworking magazine I met him at the FIMMA-MADERALIA Fair in Spain last month. We became good acquaintances over a couple of soups and Agua de Valencias.

Jerry called to warn me about how not to roast the chestnuts he had given me as a holiday treat to share with my family, He urged me to find directions on the Internet instead of winging it like he did. Turns out, he made the critical mistake of placing his chestnuts directly in the oven without proper preparation. The resulting explosion he said, "made a helluva noise," adding that he since learned, "You've got to crosscut them to let the steam out,"

This holiday, as I'm notching a pan of chestnuts, I'll think about Jerry and no doubt all of the other friends I have made in the woodworking world, who have shared their wealth of wisdom

Best wishes to all for a happy, peaceful New Year!