The UK’s premier construction equipment industry has bowed to recessionary pressures.
There are times when being proved (belatedly) right simply fails to deliver the satisfaction that it should. And that is the case with the sudden and apparently unexpected postponement of the UK’s SED 2010 exhibition.
Almost 12 months ago in these very pages, I suggested that the organisers of the exhibition were failing to take note of the recession that was gripping the industry, preferring to plough on regardless in order to feather their financial nest. The 2009 show went ahead, although on a far smaller basis and with considerably fewer visitors.
With the recent closure of its construction magazine Contract Journal, Reed Business Information’s decision to postpone this year’s SED should have been clear for all to foresee.
However, at the same time as Contract Journal closed its doors, its sister magazine Plant Managers Journal was given a quick paint-job and renamed SED – The Magazine to run alongside the new SED365 website. So while no-one thought that all in the Reed garden was rosy, there seemed to be a determination to soldier on and run the 2010 show regardless of the continuing bleak economic outlook.
But it’s not to be. It appears that, somewhat belatedly, the organisers have realised that the current recession, coupled with the fact that most manufacturers worth their salt will be committing a large part of their marketing budget to Bauma 2010 and Hillhead 2010, could render the Rockingham show an exhibitor and visitor-less desert.
So after more than a quarter of a century as the UK construction and demolition’s annual equipment supermarket, the SED succession is broken (although, interestingly, at the time of writing, SED‘s own website isn’t reflecting this fact).
Coming just a day after the UK’s Financial Times forecast a bleak outlook for demolition in 2010, this news puts paid to the many “prosperous New Year” wishes we have received in recent days.
