Hi Bill would you mean more specialist areas such as warehouse or heavy trucks may be some manufactures will look at certain types of trade shows

I would only say that the UK market is declining or will decline in relative terms to the expected rise in some regions like Asia where burgeoning economies will provoke a much keener interest from the major players and so possibly would reduce the exhibition spend in more mature markets like the UK.
I think it would be going too far to say that the UK market is no longer important to some of the major players but it will lose some of its relative appeal. I believe that since the IMHX (and its predecessors') heydays several decades ago there has been a steady decline in attendance from the public partly because certain trade shows are difficult to justify the public's attendance costs, given the ease of information access thanks to the net. Of course, the steady emasculation of British manufacturing industry has not helped either in terms of exhibitor numbers.
One cannot help having the feeling that these big trade shows are put on more for the benefit of the organisers and so fail the first law of marketing, which is give the consumer what the consumer wants rather than what you think is best for them. Perhaps the way to go is to have smaller, much more highly focussed shows which are much cheaper to exhibit at and perhaps much more useful to visitors.

Bill do you think this means the UK market is not that important to some of the major players. If you where to look at Cemat all the big manufactures was there and if you look at Bauma there was some big companies so it just might be that the UK is not as important to there business. Large manufactures need to concentrate on certain markets to get the best for there company. Kion need to keep there position in Germany and main land Europe ,
some east Asian companies need to concentrate on the growth in china. The end result will be a loss of exhibitors to smaller show's like IMHX.

According to the latest list of exhibitors (September) neither Linde nor Kalmar are exhibiting, along, incidentally, with a raft of other global forklift producers and their dealers like Briggs.

Yes, of course, many forklift producers are struggling but there may now be a new sense of realism about the worth of major trade show exhibitions, given the very high costs of attending such shows when participants take large stands with all the fatuous razamatazz that goes with it. The fact is that while such shows had some value in the past in terms of raising new business in the pre-internet era, most forklift players can give all the details of their new trucks and other developments on their websites.

When one hears about big new contracts being signed at such trade shows it is nothing more than a specious PR exercise. The particular deal would have been done, in essence, before the show. Such exhibitions today have very little to do with raising new business, relative to the past, but rather more to do with showing the flag.

The new truck is finished and is now being tested. It won't be available in UK for some time though.
May be i could go to airfix and see if they have some spare capacity. Or may be airfix is to busy working on Coal Miner truck

he is too busy running the forklift trade on here , maybe airfix hasn't finished making it yet

Will you have your new machine there, or have you built any yet?