Record attendance at Nampo Cape 2024

By Glenneis Kriel | 17 September 2024 | 3:00 pm

Nampo Cape in Bredasdorp attracted record numbers of visitors every day of the expo, which ran from 11 to 14 September.

Henk Aggenbach, chairperson of Bredasdorp Park Board, which hosted Nampo Cape in collaboration with Grain SA, said the first day attracted roughly 8 000 visitors, the second 13 200 visitors, the third 13 600 visitors and the last, which only ran for half the day, 11 000 visitors.

The expo attracted 45 894 visitors in total, more than 10 000 visitors than last year’s just over 35 000 visitors. The event attracted 24 000 visitors in 2022, after being closed for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aggenbach said the smaller stalls and eateries got most traction on the Saturday when many city-folk and people who could not get off during the week visited, whereas the bigger stalls got most of their traction on weekdays.

“It is difficult to quantify how much the expo bought in for exhibitors, because they generally do not want to share that type of information. However, we know of many implements that had been sold and of many companies that had to restock, some of them daily, to fulfil the demand for their products,” Aggenbach said.

Earlier this year, during the launch of the event, Aggenbach said that the Overberg District Municipality estimated the contribution of the event at between R15 million and R25 million to the local economy, whereas exhibitor surveys estimated its value at between R10 million and R12 million.

Aggenbach ascribed the success of this year’s expo to excellent management, good marketing via work of mouth, the media and Grain SA, and favourable climatic conditions. Along with this, the expo catered for the whole family, with something interesting for old and young.

“Nampo Cape should not be seen as in competition with Nampo Bothaville, but rather a way to accommodate winter cereal farmers who were planting at the time Nampo Bothaville was hosted. Nampo Cape is also more focused on commodities that are grown in the Western Cape,” he said.

Toit Wessels, one of the organisers of Nampo Cape, said that another 38 stalls had been added to this year’s event to accommodate more exhibitors, with a total of 600 stalls being occupied by 485 identities.

“We won’t add any more stalls next year but will rather focus on repairing and improving infrastructure. For instance, we added a lot more parking space to the event this year, but we want to change the entrances next year so that visitors do not have to walk as far to enter the expo. We also want to make the terrain more pedestrian friendly.”