Looking forward to FIT

Bohle and UAP are the latest big names to confirm their presence for the FIT Show in May. This year’s exhibition will mark a special 10-year anniversary for FIT, before it reverts to its usual ‘every other year’ format to avoid clashing with Fensterbau.

According to organisers, 20% of the FIT Show will feature companies that have never exhibited before and with 85% of space already allocated, it looks like we could be in for a decent outing before the show takes its two-year break.

In other news this week, companies seem to be fighting over who has had the best year in 2022, and/or the most productive start to 2023.

Since the start of January, we’ve heard from the likes of Listers, Deceuninck, Carl F Groupco and VBH – all of whom enjoyed bumper sales last year – and now it’s the turn of Rockdoor and Haffner.

The former says that 2022 was the company’s most successful year in 30 years of manufacturing – thanks to a FIT Show debut and the introduction of a ‘No Bow Guarantee’ – while the latter has announced a very strong start to 2023 thanks to fabricators clamouring for its Graf Synergy machines.

Matt Thomas, MD of Haffner, says that the company has enjoyed a ‘sharp increase’ in orders for Graf Synergy and its seamless welding technology and adds that this indicates continuing demand for high-end products going forward.

In fact, all of the aforementioned companies have highlighted demand for premium products as a major driver for sales.

That’s good news for fabs and installers that have the product portfolios to match this trend – and an alarm bell for those that don’t…