The 9th China International Foundry, Metalforming and Industrial Furnace Exhibition (METAL CHINA 2008), sponsored by China Foundry Association (CFA) and organized by CFA and Hannover Messe International GmbH, will be staged again from June 3-6, 2008 at Hall W1-W5 in Shanghai New International Exposition Center. This year METAL CHINA exhibition is being held in conjunction with the China International Casting Exhibition 2008 (CASTING CHINA 2008).

METAL CHINA 2008 will be increased by 12,000 square meters area this year, compared with last fair. The total display area will amount to about 45,000 square meters. More than 1,000 most aggressive and representative foundry related enterprises from China and other 30 countries are going to gather in METAL CHINA 2008. The number of professional visitors is estimated to come to around 60,000. METAL CHINA 2008 has been acknowledged as one of the three most popular foundry fairs globally as well as the largest foundry exhibition in Asia.

The category of exhibits in METAL CHINA 2008:

• All types of foundry equipments for melting, molding, core-making, sand processing, cleaning and heat treatment, etc.
• All types of monitoring apparatuses or tools for testing, analyzing, controlling.
• All types of foundry raw and auxiliary materials, foundry tools.
• All types of furnaces and kilns used on foundry field.
• Products and equipments for environmental protection, labor protection and energy-conservation.
• Foundry technologies, research achievements, patents, know-how.
• Professional foundry websites, magazines, periodicals, information, consultation, service, etc.

The category of exhibits in CASTING CHINA 2008:

• Steel castings, iron castings, non-ferrous alloy castings (investment casting, die casting, full mold casting, centrifugal casting, and other technologies).
• Castings for Automotive, machine tool, shipping industry, engineering machinery, rail transportation, heavy-duty machinery, mineral machinery, textile machinery, printing machinery, universal machinery, energy and power fields, electrical power industry, petrochemical industry, hardware casting, pipe castings, pump castings, valve castings, etc.
• Patterns and dies, jigs and fixtures, measuring instruments, rough and finish machining equipments.

CASTING CHINA 2008 displays those kinds of castings that reflect the particular characteristics of casting end-users products. It will set up special display area for automobile castings, machine tool castings, general-engineering castings, art castings and patterns. At the same time, CASTING CHINA 2008 particularly establishes display area of "Foundry Industrial Zone" with its local characters of economic development in foundry industry. Local government and foundry enterprises would take this good opportunity to promote their business.

As the biggest country of casting production in the world, the output of castings of China has ranked the top place continuously for seven years. In 2008, the output exceeded 28 million tons and casting export volumes amounted to 2.6 million tons. China supplies various types and different grades of foundry products to international manufacturing industry. Foundry equipments and raw and auxiliary materials made in China have been exported to other countries. This situation has made China a very important link in the international supply chains of foundry industry.