Goodbye and hello

I am delighted to say that we now have an experienced editor taking the helm at Hoist, Daniel Searle. Dan first joined us two years ago as feature writer on Cranes Today, after a ten year stint at The Canmaker, the leading international magazine in a similarly laser-targetted sector. Dan worked with me on Cranes Today for a year, where many of our readers and interviewees will have come to know him, before taking on the editorship of our new sister product, World Construction Network.

I’ve been pleased with what we’ve done on Hoist over the last year. However, it is a very different magazine from Cranes Today, and needs an editor who is entirely focussed on it. After a year steering the launch of WCN, Dan was ready again for a new challenge, just as we were looking for a new editor. With his extensive and proven experience in industrial business-to-business writing and editing, Dan was the obvious choice for the role.

Dan comes to the magazine as we look forward to ProMat in Chicago. Over the next two months he’ll be putting together our show preview pieces, alongside editing our regular features and writing more in-depth news pieces. I know he wants to make our feature coverage deeper and richer, with more industry interviews. I hope that you will let him know what you think we should cover, and welcome him now as I turn this comment, and the magazine, over to him.

Will North, Group Editor

As you’ll have just read in Will’s comment, I will be overseeing Hoist from here on in. I’ve worked alongside the magazine for more than two years, and have written pieces for Hoist from time to time as well - from a recent trip to Demag in Germany back to a tour of manufacturers in the Basque region of Spain.

What’s exciting about the role is the sheer scope of the industry sector covered in the magazine. A very high proportion of the industrial premises around the world - whether they be warehouses, manufacturing hubs, or processing facilities - use the equipment covered in Hoist, spanning a huge range of sectors and industries.

As manufacturers of this equipment will know, however, despite the ubiquity of this equipment, it’s often used indoors or generally away from view, for a range of day-to-day purposes. It’s therefore not always easy for the products to promote themselves in the way that, say, big construction cranes do. Hoists can also suffer from their versatility - as a manufacturer of mini cranes once explained to me, a combination of indoor jobs and being suitable for a huge range of work makes it more difficult to pick out specific uses to sell to customers.

One of the aims I have as editor of Hoist is to highlight as many uses for hoists as possible - to give the industry a platform to promote itself, and all the various applications hoist equipment has. If you’re involved in the sector and would like to share a case study or new product, please do get in touch.

Daniel Searle, Editor