SNEC Shanghai 2020 Has a New Date. In August Now

SNEC Shanghai, easily the biggest trade show for the solar sector globally, has announced a new date for the show this year. The show will now be held from August 7-10, 2020, at the same venue in Shanghai. As always, the event plans include  both an exhibition, and a conference this year.

The event had been forced to postpone from its original May schedule, due to the Coronavirus spread across the world.  At the time, no new date had been announced, although later, an October schedule had been drawn up. The preponement to August is this effectively the second schedule change for the event.

For visitors from India, especially from the solar sector, who would make the trip every year to connect with suppliers in China, catch up on the latest technology jumps and meet their global counterparts, the event this year might yet be the one they miss out on.

Besides the uncertainty around international travel to China, with airline schedules expected to start normalising only by July to pre-covid levels, it remains to be seen how many will see the value of the trip this year, thanks to the disruption the industry has suffered.

Interestingly, for many firms who are loudly lending support for the ‘vocal for local’ plans in the sector, the trip might make even more sense as many key suppliers, including complete assembly lines for solar equipment manufacturing, are China based now.

Many large developers we spoke to indicted that the new timelines might be too tight for them to schedule a visit this time, as key team members might be too tied up in exiting projects till September and beyond. ‘Project execution will slow down again in July -August due to the monsoons, and the only value for us might be to negotiate better rates where orders have not been placed already”, said one developer.

One thing seems certain. Team sizes, and overall presence is likely to be much smaller this year from the Indian cohort.

The new dates also place SNEC just a month ahead of REI 2020, (planned for September this year) the biggest trade event in India. With many global firms likely to have a presence in both events, this will only further weaken the case for Indian delegates to make the trip to Shanghai .