The African Bureau of Conventions was founded by, and is run by Janine Meyer and Sharon Peetz, both high profile individuals in the SA conference and events industry, and with whom the Gearhouse Group has enjoyed a long standing and successful working relationship, including the World Summit of Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 2002, to date the largest convention ever hosted in Africa.
The organisation's aim is to generate additional business in this sector by securing and delivering a wide range of business and commercial events throughout South Africa and the African continent, offering the highest quality and most cost effective delivery solutions for all areas of an event. Currently, they are bidding on 44 international conventions until 2018.
Gearhouse's Cape Town and Johannesburg branch managers Philip Beardwood and John McDermott were instrumental in negotiating the ABC membership. The Gearhouse Group will now be ABC's exclusive technical partners.
Beardwood sees the conferencing world as a healthy and expanding market in Africa where Gearhouse can excel with a wide range of expertise, skills and resources. "We want to expand our business in conferencing and exhibitions across the Gearhouse Group" he elucidates, "So ABC is an ideal organisation to partner with. We have known Janine for many years and worked together on some world class projects. Both Janine and Sharon are extremely driven and energetic and ABC offers a fresh commercial approach to business development in this area and in attracting events to South Africa."
(Jim Evans)
