A launch meeting was held for the SAHA EXPO 2024 International Defence, Aviation and Space Industry Fair, which will be held for the 4th time this year by the Defence, Aviation and Space Cluster Association (SAHA Istanbul). SAHA Istanbul Secretary General Levent Kerim Uça, SAHA EXPO General Manager Murad Çakır, and association member company representatives attended the meeting at the Istanbul Maritime Museum.
At the meeting, comprehensive information was shared about SAHA EXPO 2024, which will be held at the Istanbul Fair Center on October 22-26 under the auspices of the Presidency and with the support of 6 Ministries and the Secreeriat of Defence Industriies .
SAHA Istanbul Secretary General Levent Kerim Uça, speaking about the event to be held at the Istanbul Expo Center on October 22-26, said, "114 agreements were signed at the 2022 fair. The announced financial value of this was approximately $1.4 billion. We anticipate that the number of participants and agreements will increase this year. Our estimate is that around $2 billion worth of agreements will be made at this fair." Levent Kerim Uça continued, "There is a serious demand for participation in the fair, especially from regional countries. Of course, we determine the countries that will participate in the fair with stands and those that will participate with official delegations and commercial delegations in coordination with both our Ministry of Trade and our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
There is a list of 124 countries that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has notified us of. According to the list, we both made our invitations and accepted the participants. Both these countries' public and private defence companies, especially the Gulf countries, will be participating in the fair." "There is an increasing demand for defence and aviation products worldwide."
SAHA EXPO General Manager Murad Çakır said, "We are increasing the area from 5 thousand square meters to 90 thousand square meters this year, 80 thousand square meters of indoor and 10 thousand square meters of outdoor space. The company participants were 181 in the first fair; now, we expect over 1,200 participants.
The number of visitors also increased from 13 thousand in the first fair to over 150 thousand visitors, with the number of public days increasing to 2 days in this fair. All important players in the sector are taking part in the fair. However, SAHA EXPO is actually a supply chain fair and is mostly SME-oriented. It is an event where SMEs hold mutual meetings with Turkish platform manufacturers, foreign participants, and important companies from abroad."
