Poznań International Fair

Międzynarodowe Targi Poznańskie

Type	Public company
Founded	1921
Headquarters	Poznań, Poland
Key people	Dr Andrzej Byrt (Chairman) Przemysław Trawa (Vice-Chairman) Tomasz Kobierski (Vice-Chairman)
Revenue	20 000 000+ (2009)
Number of employees	490 (2010)
Website	mtp.pl/en/

The Poznań International Fair (PIF, Polish: Międzynarodowe Targi Poznańskie, MTP) is the biggest industrial fair in Poland. It is held on the Poznań fairground in Poland. Poznań International Fair is located in the centre of the city opposite the main railway station - Poznań Główny, in the centre of Poland and in the centre of Europe.

Typically, there are about 13,200 exhibitors including about 3,000 foreign companies from 70 countries of the world participate in 80 trade fair events organized on the grounds of the Poznań fair.

The Poznań-based fair owns the largest exhibition and conference infrastructure in Poland, including 16 high standard air-conditioned halls with a large exhibition area (over 110,000 sq.m. in exhibition halls and almost 35,000 sq.m. on open grounds) and 81 modern conference rooms.

The idea of organising a modern fair by Polish manufacturers and merchants had its origins during the congress of the Union of Merchant Associations held in Poznań in 1917. The Union was an organisation of Polish merchants from Greater Poland and Eastern Pomerania. The fair was required to be of an international character and organised like the Leipzig Trade Fair. The first Poznań Trade Fair (I Targ Poznański), as it was called, took place in 1921 (from 28 May till 5 June), and the first chairman was Mieczysław Krzyżankiewicz. Before 1924, only Polish companies, companies from Free City of Gdańsk and foreign companies with branches in Poland which were represented by Polish citizens could participate. During 1924, agreements were signed with companies from Czechoslovakia, France, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Germany, Romania, Switzerland, and Sweden, so that the first really international fair took place in 1925. In 1927 the PIF was accepted as a member of the UFI.

The intensive developments of the 1920s were crowned by the huge General National Exhibition (Polish: Powszechna Wystawa Krajowa, PWK, PeWuKa) of 1929 that was visited by 4,5 mln people. This was the year that the Great Depression began. Despite the difficult economic situation, the PIF survived and at the end of the interbellum it was one of largest companies of its kind in Europe. During World War II, the company ceased to exist, its infrastructure was confiscated, and turned into a factory of Focke-Wulf, which made the PIF a military target for the Allied air forces. This led to great destruction of its infrastructure in 1945. During the war 85% of the PIF was destroyed, but despite this damage, the first postwar exhibition took place in 1946 and one year later, in 1947, the PIF had already regained its international character. In 1990 the Poznań International Fair transformed into a limited liability company with the State Treasure as one of its shareholders Since then the PIF is continuing to expand and enlarge its exhibition space.