Next year Cologne will once again be the central meeting place for the world’s furniture industry. It will be the focus of the three trade fairs imm cologne, LivingKitchen and interzum. interzum will once again offer international visitors a unique, wide-ranging market overview of material and design trends with halls at full capacity.

The interzum trade fair will also again set the standards in 2013 as the trade fair for materials to manufacture furniture and interior fittings. The focus will be on new products and ideas in particular because manufacturers have to a large extent aligned their development programmes with the two-year cycle of interzum. Unusually 2013 is the next date because for the first time the trade fair will take place after Ligna in Hanover, which is traditionally held over Ascension Day.

The supporting programme is especially varied for this forthcoming event: for the seventh time the competition for the „interzum award: intelligent material & design “will show which position the supply industry occupies in the development of contemporary designs. Awards will be given to innovative products, which combine above-average functionality with a high level of quality. The young designer award will be presented by the Association of German Industrial Designers (Verband der Deutschen Industriedesigner). In addition to the coveted awards, the interior designer day organised by the Architects’ Chamber of North Rhine-Westphalia will take place once again. The Veneer and Nature Initiative will be organising the firmly established European Veneer Forum together with the Association of the German Timber Trade (Gesamtver¬band Deutscher Holzhandel) and Koelnmesse. An innovation workshop for wood-based products is planned together with the Association of the German Wood-based Panel Industries (VHI).

There are already signs of a high level of registrations for interzum 2013 at such an early stage. By September 2012 registrations had already been received from 690 companies. Approximately 60 per cent of companies are foreign with the largest number of exhibitors coming from Italy, closely followed by Turkey and Spain. Koelnmesse is expecting over 1,450 exhibitors at interzum in 2013.