Now, that’s show business!

Now
Now

the sixth Advanced Engineering UK event threw open its doors to the UK manufacturing's audience. Did anyone spot our new magazine brand door gels on the way in? No, I thought not.

Beneath November's dark and leaden Birmingham skies, the sixth Advanced Engineering UK event threw open its doors to the UK manufacturing's expectant audience. Did anyone spot our attractive new magazine brand door gels on the way in? No, I thought not. With arms resembling a human skipping rope after spending the previous day setting up our show stand and unpacking and stacking our three publications into magazine racks, my colleagues and I traipsed into Hall 5 on Wednesday morning wondering what the next two days had in store for us. Working with both my Aerospace Manufacturing and Composites in Manufacturing hats on, I decided to quickly visit the show's Composites Engineering segment – and promptly got stuck there for the duration! Yep, the composites element continues to grow year on year and I failed miserably in getting round to meet everyone at the show. Apologies to anyone I missed. My first port of call had to be meeting the ladies on the Composites UK stand: Sue, Claire and Stella. It's refreshing and promising for our industry that an increasing number of women are involved in this engineering industry. It is a real ‘positive' and bodes well for the future in attracting more young women to this vibrant, growing sector. Alas, my first appointment with Technical Fibre Products' Rosie was cancelled due to illness, so I moved swiftly on to more appointments with Rob West at Progressive Technology, Jim Fulton at Mirka, Victoria at Lectra and Alex at Scott Bader. Further meetings followed and it was good to catch up with Rachael and Amanda from Attwater, PRF's Hannah, who for once had avoided any pre-show illnesses or ‘accidents', Team Refrigeration's Julian was keeping his cool as was a healthy Paul and the lovely Leah from Emkay Plastics. Formaplex's Claire buttonholed me to take a look at Sailrocket 2. Formaplex has provided tooling and complete CNC milled foils for its record-breaking session. Sailrocket's Master submariner, Paul Larsen was on hand to give me the lowdown on the beast which looked half rocket, half Kevin Costner trimaran thingy from the Waterworld film (and yes, I did check if he had webbed fingers too, but no). He casually dropped into the conversation that he'd attained speeds of 75mph on the open water. Not being a mariner myself, I didn't dare ask what the Highway Code equivalent of legal braking distances were! <Putting on the Ritz> Wednesday showtime rolled into Wednesday evening's Composites UK awards dinner extravaganza. Dressed in a smart tuxedos (I still struggle with bow-ties), associate editor, Ed Hill, business development manager, David McCauley and I quickstepped through the corridors to be confronted by an array of games like giant Jenga and air hockey. Chairman, Andy Dugmore began proceedings by recognising the great work the Organisation has done in increasing its membership to 241 members. Composites in Manufacturing was also involved in sponsoring the awards for the first time this year, two in fact: Employer of the year, which was won by MPM Limited and Innovation in materials, which was won by EcoTechnilin. Although as award presenters, David and I got a little nervous, it all seemed to go without a hitch and hopefully the industry now appreciates that our publication is trying to ‘do its bit' for the industry. That said, Whizz-Kidz representative, Harriet Little put everyone in their places with a very inspiring speech on how Whizz-Kidz helps to provide disabled children with the essential wheelchairs and other mobility equipment they need to lead fun and active childhoods. Another highlight of the evening was a huge game of ‘heads or tails'. Such fun, I lasted about two goes whilst Sigmatex's Christine utilised ‘amazing' legerdemain to win the prize of a bottle of bubbly. For such a formal event and dressed in formal attire, I decided to mark the occasion by roping in the Toastmaster to take a memorable photo of the three of us. Our cheesy smiles were disrupted by a crazier than a bat out of hell Graham Mulholland, who came flying in to photobomb proceedings. This man will do anything for publicity – and he has jazz hands too by the looks of it. He's forgiven though as we'd all had a couple of Babychams by then. <The day after the night before> There was no let up on Thursday morning. Relieved to have got through the night in the hotel without waking up and finding Lenny Henry in my bed, it was off to breakfast for some sausages made from meat of unknown origin and washed down with orange juice that was really only ‘orange' in colour. NTPT's new man Joe Summers has a name that's far easier to pronounce than his predecessor, whilst there were absolutely no language difficulties with JEC Group's new spokeswoman, Anne-Carole Barbarin. Asked whether JEC's new JEC Germany 2016 September event was in any way deliberately positioned to kick Composites Europe off the show calendar, she didn't mince her words, replying immediately with a damning ‘yes'. Clearly, Madame Barbarin is not a lady to be messed with. Smiles and handshakes followed with two of Composites in Manufacturing's favourite PR & marketing companies, Billy McKenna of Aro PR and Nigel O'Dea of Outsourcing B2B. However, by mid-afternoon I was suffering from what we journalists call ‘the thousand yard stare'. You forget the basics like how to speak and you no longer recognise people. It was time for a much needed sandwich with fillings of unknown origin and something orange coloured to wash it down with. I promptly ran into Joe Belham, a member of acapella singing sensation, Sons of Pitches – as featured on BBC2's The Naked Choir with Gareth Malone. He was working his last day as a Barista on the food stall and kindly obliged me with a photo opportunity. He's nearly 7ft tall, so he's actually bending down to get in shot with me. Now I've been doing this journalism lark for nearly 15 years. I decided to retrain after going quite cross-eyed working for BAE Systems as a manufacturing engineer. Another year there and I would have become completely institutionalised. My current job still surprises me when some exhibitors respond to my suggestion that I can work with them editorially by looking at me as though I'm a Martian or something. I'm one of you guys! I'm not trying to sell you anything! Okay, rant over. <The long goodbye> As the second day drew to a close I was still treading the boards, catching up with Hexion CCT and its new Optibox automated, programmable resin curing and moulding system. Hexion – and Formaplex too – have some cracking automotive related exhibits on their stands. It's just a question of time before carbon fibre car body parts are more commonplace on affordable saloon cars too. And by ‘time' I mean the production lead-time to produce them efficiently. By 4pm I'd gone a bit doolally and actually didn't want the show to end as I still had plenty more exhibitor folk to see. Oh well, I'd tried my best. I went searching to say goodbye to Easyfairs new event director, Katie Crocombe, but she was down at the Lab Innovations event in the Pavilion. I realise she can't be in two places at once, but it would have been a nice touch to be on hand to thank and bid everyone farewell at the end of what (I think) was a very successful show – at least for the UK composites industry. Congratulations Easyfairs and its hard-working team, and I look forward to being here again next year. Now, where did I leave the Elastoplast? Mike Richardson, editor  

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