Trade exhibitions are kick-starting the year

Logimat really got this year going in terms of meeting new and familiar faces. I have to admit, until last autumn the show wasn’t in my plans, purely because I hadn’t realised quite the number of companies from our industry who would be in attendance. Then, during my visit to a few companies in the west of Germany, I was informed that many of the major crane manufacturers in Europe would be attending.

Fast forward a few months and I was on the plane to Stuttgart—which proved very convenient, since Logimat is held around five minutes’ walk from the city’s airport—to meet with several manufacturers of overhead cranes, jib cranes, lifting attachments, and more. I’ve been writing for the lifting industry for three and a half years now, and for Hoist magazine for just over one year, and although I’ve made contact with many of the companies in our industry, shows like Logimat always remind me that there are plenty more people to meet, and products to discuss.

With CeMat on the horizon you would have been forgiven for assuming that product launches might be saved for that show, but I was pleased to be able to discuss several new innovations, as well as learning more about the current state of the central European market. There will be a report on this in next month’s issue, and for now you can see photos of some of the highlights at the show in this issue. Next stop is Atlanta, where I’m hoping to learn about the US market and more new and improved products for our sector, followed by CeMat towards the end of the month.

The only potential issue is that, having just moved house, everything I own is currently being stored in a large pile of unlabelled cardboard boxes in my spare room. This combined with three international trips in the space of six weeks may result in some packing problems. So, if you see a man at Modex or CeMat wearing a football kit rather than a shirt and tie, that will be me, having picked up the wrong bag on my way to the airport. Should this happen, please do introduce yourself and feel free to laugh.

To the issue at hand, though—specifically the issue of Hoist in your hand. I’m pleased to welcome our new writer Julian Champkin to the team; he’s a very experienced journalist and has contributed two of the features you’ll read in this issue, on process control cranes and asset tracking for lifting equipment, as well as a number of news articles. He’ll be writing more for the magazine throughout the year.

For my part, I spoke with some of the manufacturers in the Turkey market this month—you can read about their success from page 30.