Wendy Zhang/ Shanghai Daily news

The Shanghai New International Expo Center announced yesterday it will invest US$66 million next year to build two new exhibition halls to satisfy the growing market demand for exhibition space, today's Shanghai Morning Post reported.
This will be the fourth-time expansion of the center which is Shanghai's largest exhibition space. The expansion project will be completed within one year increasing the exhibition space from 80,500 to 103,500 square meters.
By the 2010 World Expo, the overall construction of the center will be completed. It's total exhibition space will then be 330,000 square meters.
The Sino-Germany-invested center opened in November, 2001, but it has not been able to keep up with the growing demand in the local exhibition market. Therefore, the board of directors has decided to build two more exhibition halls increasing the number of halls from seven to nine. Each of the two new halls will cover a floor space of 11,500 square meters and will be 11 meters in height, the same as the other seven halls.
According to the Shanghai Customs, in the first 11 months of the year, a total of 339 international exhibitions and technology exchange fairs were held in Shanghai, with a combined exhibition space of 1.67 million square meters, up nearly 50 percent this year and more than 100 percent from the previous year respectively. More than 55 percent, or 188 of the exhibitions utilized a show space of more than 1,000 square meters, with 49 super-large exhibitions requiring an area of more than 10,000 square meters.
Pudong and Puxi host distinctive types of exhibitions: elegant arts, culture and high-end consumer goods are mostly exhibited in Puxi, while mechanic equipments and high-tech products are mainly shown in Pudong.