Speculation has been rife recently over whether The Timber Show would go ahead at London’s ExCeL in March. But it still came as a shock to many when the event was cancelled last week.
The first edition of the show in 2006 was not huge, and some exhibitors said it wasn’t worth their while. However, a good proportion said they’d picked up useful leads and hoped the embryonic event would evolve into a true shop window for UK timber plc.
So why did it fail? At the time of going to press, we hadn’t heard the official explanation from the insolvency practitioners for organisers East Exhibitions. But, according to popular opinion, one factor was competition from the expanding Ecobuild show at London’s Earls Court (February 26-28), which is attracting a growing timber following. Economic jitters may also have deterred some waiverers from committing to a stand.
Others have questioned whether the UK timber industry can, or is willing to support a national exhibition in its own right, or whether it needs one. This does, however, seem to be a minority opinion. The consensus is that the sector should have some form of showcase, particularly to help it capitalise on the UK’s overall drive for sustainable construction and the environmental stress of building plans for the 2012 London Olympics and 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games.
The organisers of Interbuild/Timber Zone (October 26-30) bill their event as the exhibition model that can work for the trade, providing an exclusive timber focus within a wider construction event. This year, for the first time, it also runs alongside the W8-Working with Wood exhibition at the NEC (October 26-29).
TTJ has even-handedly backed the various UK exhibitions of interest to the trade. But with the demise of The Timber Show we’ve welcomed the offer of a special rate for the latter’s disappointed exhibitors to take space at Interbuild or the Timber Zone instead. As far as we’re concerned, the more people know about the benefits of building and working with wood, the better.
