It’s the time of year when the industry meets

14 March 2019

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My visit to Logimat in Stuttgart last month was as fruitful and interesting as in 2018. Indeed, my only complaint—and this had nothing to do with the show itself—was that due to prior commitments I was only able to be at the exhibition for one full day.


So, my apologies to anyone who was exhibiting but with whom I didn’t manage to chat. Rest assured that I was drinking plenty of coffee to maintain optimum walking speed, but it was testament to the amount on show that there still wasn’t quite enough time to discover all the new innovations.

It does seem that Logimat is very much an important fixture in our industry’s calendar. It’s also one of the most conveniently-located, being about five minutes’ walk from Stuttgart airport.

Next flight for me will be to Promat in Chicago. That takes place during the same week as Bauma, the huge construction show in Munich, Germany, which my colleagues over on Cranes Today will be attending.

In fact, whilst Hoist doesn’t tend to look at construction projects—we primarily focus on permanently-installed lifting equipment, whereas, of course, the lifting kit used at construction projects tends to be removed once the building is completed—there are a number of companies from our industry attending Bauma. That’s partly because the show also covers the mining sector, where specialised winches that house long rope falls are essential, and also because some systems that we would class as hoists, such as gantry cranes, can also be used as temporary fixtures at construction sites.

You’ll see an example of this in this month’s Project Of The Month on page 10, with Jaso supplying a gantry crane for a tunnelling project in Chile. The crane will be there for plenty of time, but, once the job is completed, it’s designed to be easy to disassemble and move on to the next project.

Given the equipment being used, I see it as a story of interest for our readership. However, I’m aware that there are some grey areas around the remit of our magazine, so if there are topics you would like to read more about, or indeed less about, then please do let me know.

So, going back to Bauma, and Promat, which both take place during the second week of April. I would predict that if you’re on a flight to either Munich or Chicago to attend one of these shows and ask the person next to you what they do for a living, there’s a good chance they’ll be working in an industry fairly closely related to ours.

I’ve attended Bauma before, when I wrote for Cranes Today, and it’s an impressive, almost overwhelmingly huge show, with more than enough to see and do for the whole week. But Promat is a key show for our sector, and North America is a key region for the scope of the magazine—so if you’ll be there, I’ll look forward to seeing you in April.