W14 turned out to be a runaway success for TM Machinery, with both Striebig vertical panel saws and Viet artisan wide-belt sanders proving popular with the large number of visitors to its biggest-ever stand.

“There was a great deal of interest in the new Striebig 4D, being shown in the UK for the first time, which offers fully automatic panel optimisation,” said TM’s sales director Matt Pearce. The show model had already been pre-sold to Lawcris Panel Products of Leeds with more sales expected following the show.

“Optimism has certainly returned to the industry and people were prepared to spend money at W14, which was not the case two years ago,” says Matt Pearce. “In all we sold eight Striebig machines, including the Compact and Control models that were on the stand, with customers particularly impressed with the extremely small footprint of the high specification Compact.”

For the first time TM Machinery was showing the Italian-made Viet range of artisan wide-belt sanders and Matt Pearce says the company received a highly positive reaction from visitors.

“Customers really appreciated the competitive price of the small S1 model, given its build quality and high specification. They were also highly impressed with the fine finish delivered by the new Opera 5 machine, which we demonstrated by sanding off ink from brochures without any damage to the paper.

“All in all we had a great show. Visitor numbers were way up on W12, as was the quality of the enquiries we received, and we now have a great many strong leads to follow up.”