Unity on show at hit Timber Expo

Timber Expo event manager Loretta Sales carries a piece of paper around with her that’s covered in scribbles, ticks and arrows and clearly been repeatedly folded and unfolded. It’s the floor plan for the next show in 2012. Space was already 40% reserved at the end of the inaugural event two weeks ago, and Ms Sales is quickly pencilling in more stands. What is more, Timber Expo next year will take a 50% bigger slice of Coventry’s Ricoh Arena.

Rupert Scott, marketing manager of one of Timber Expo’s principal backers TRADA Technology, said at the show two weeks ago that he believed that, with 4,000 visitors and 120-plus exhibitors, it had achieved the critical mass it needed to carry it forward. He was clearly right and that has to be good news for the UK timber sector and its customers.

For some time the view has been expressed that timber as an industry has not connected or communicated sufficiently strongly with rest of the construction supply chain, through to contractors, engineers, architects and other specifiers.

The Timber Zone at Interbuild and Timber Works section at Ecobuild got part of the way there, but still didn’t sufficiently present the industry as a single, co-ordinated unit. What is more, at these events timber has been just one of many attractions for the visitor and tended, some argued, to be overshadowed by materials and building systems sectors with deeper marketing pockets.

At Timber Expo there was no danger of visitors “sniffing around before passing on to some other building product they’re actually interested in”, as one exhibitor said.

If they were at Timber Expo they were there to see timber full stop.

Timber Expo also showed the industry operating together effectively and pulling firmly in the same direction to increase timber specification. Holding the exhibition with the Wood Awards presentations and TRADA’s In Touch with Timber Conference for architects, engineers and other construction professionals was clearly the right move. And it further reinforced the perception of industry unity, which can only give customers and specifiers confidence, for Wood for Good to launch its Timber Manifesto at Timber Expo. This is backed by all the key timber industry organisations and presents government with a punchy seven-point plan to boost its own and the UK’s timber use and consequently shrink the country’s carbon footprint. What better place to unveil such a document than an exhibition displaying the wealth of products and systems the timber industry has to offer.

Perhaps the most encouraging comment on the prospects of Timber Expo came from Belgian International Timber trader Vandecasteele. The show reminded them of the early days of France’s Carrefour International du Bois exhibition. That now attracts over 500 exhibitors and 10,000 visitors.

So if you want to get your company name on that increasingly busy 2012 floorplan, the advice would seem to be don’t hang about.