Vital and strategic

Glass Times editor Nathan Bushell reports from this year’s Glasstec in Düsseldorf.

I often find that with large events expectation is the enemy of success. However, within five minutes of walking the halls at Glasstec it is obvious the show has not lost any of its confidence as a vital strategic international event – which is exactly what I was expecting.

Of course, I always maintain a level of scepticism when talking to exhibitors leading up to a show because they are very unlikely to talk down an event they have invested heavily in. In some cases that can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. Nonetheless the first conversation I had this morning was with a group of visitors to Glasstec: Cornwall Glass and Mackenzie Glass. They were meeting Dave Broxton on the Bohle stand, and they were full of enthusiasm for the show.

“You always hit the ground running,” Cornwall Glass’s MD Mark Mitchell said.”You always get value for money and we’ve already had some quality productive meetings. I’ve never come away from Glasstec thinking it was a waste of time.”

Dave said that from his – an exhibitor’s – point of view, he has been surprised by the amount of optimism shown by visitors.

“Despite the uncertainty over Brexit, people coming onto the stand have got ambitious plans for next year and beyond,” he said.

Mark said that it seemed that there was more apprehension from the Europeans than from the British visitors when it came to Brexit, and it was a conversation point that was never far away.

“It’s a more frequently raised topic than price and supply,” he said.

There’ll be further details in the December issue, but I’ll tweet when I can – @glasstimes and @nathanbushell.