With the unfortunate news that the rearranged Ligna has been cancelled and scheduled for May 2023, it means that eager trade show visitors will have to wait until next February’s W Exhibition & Elements to be able to contrast and compare machinery and materials, and to meet colleagues face-to-face. I know that manufacturers are doing what they can to help their customers with digital events, Facetime machine appointments and the like, but this will never replace the live events of the kind we have become accustomed to. In light of all this, I confidently predict an absolutely gang-busters UK event in February 2022 – with such pent-up demand it should be the best event in the UK for this sector since the ‘good old days’. Montgomery, the W Exhibition & Elements organiser is hard at work with a great team dedicated to delivering a world-class UK event next February – in next month’s issue, we will hear from Montgomery’s Group Design & Build Division MD, Nickie West, and her team.
In this issue, we catch up with one of the country’s most established furniture and joinery business, Wedd Joinery, and hear how the long-established firm has stayed relevant overcoming wars, financial crises, changing attitudes and of course Covid – and that’s before navigating the ever-evolving technical production changes. Read their story on p24.
For this month’s Insight, we hear from Wren Kitchens design director, Darren Watts as he looks at colour, specifically the currently-trending use of brighter, more confident tones in contemporary kitchen design – Egger and Rastelli Kook also feature from p20 onwards.
This issue also sees two of our most popular features – firstly Edgebanding Materials & Technology (p36 on) which features the likes of Ostermann, Rehau, Camco, WPR-TAKA, Kenyon alongside RW Woodmachines, Homag and Ney; and secondly, Saws, Blades & Cutting Technology (p50 on) featuring TM Machinery, Daltons, Vollmer, Freud, Salvamac. Rounding off this issue is our biggest Products and Updates selections of recent issues, beginning on p70.
I hope you enjoy the issue.
John Legg, editor john@media66.net
