Farm Business Innovation Show Report
NEC Birmingham
6 & 7 November 2019
Andrea Ellison, who has just spent a very busy but encouraging two days at the Home and Farm Innovation Show at the NEC in Birmingham, reports on a successful visit:
I was pleasantly surprised and optimistic for our industry at the vastly increased number of visitors coming to talk about ground source heating. This showed greatly increased levels of interest and knowledge of ground source heat pumps.
Of the 155 recorded visitors to our stand only one person asked me 'How does this work then?' The show has shown me, and other members in the hall, that heat pumps appear to be coming to the fore in the decision making when replacing other heating systems.
The other members who were in the hall agreed with me that the quality of the enquiries were good and there were very few 'tyre kickers' visiting us. We all agreed that there appears to be a sea change towards awareness of heat pumps.
The show opened at 10am on both days and closed at 5pm. I had people heading straight to our stand at 10am and on Wednesday I still had people with me at 5pm on Thursday. They had noted that we were there and had came specifically to see us to find out about heat pumps as an alternative to the traditional forms of heating.
High volume of visitors to the GSHPA stand
I kept a tally of most of the visitors we had which reached 68 on Wednesday and 87 on Thursday. That is a phenomenal number compared to any other show or exhibition I have done before.
The visitors comprised a total of 33 enquiries regarding farms and farm buildings redevelopment and conversion, 48 other building projects, 11 RHI enquiries plus three more wanting to know if they would be able to get RHI if they replaced their systems, as their installers had not applied on their behalf, 18 caravan parks plus glamping pods and chalets, three wanted to heat swimming pools, three wanted me to make recommendations, one wanted to discuss using a canal frontage as a heat source, four wanted to confirm that the installer they were using were members of the GSHPA.
I also had three disaster stories of untrained installers making bad installs plus one whose system had stopped working and they wanted to know if they could get help and support from the GSHPA technical panel.
The rest were visitors who just wanted to take a flier or business card so that they could do some research from our website or contact us at a later date.
GSHPA Presentations
Two people came across to congratulate Bean Beanland on his presentation, which they both described as informative and entertaining, and Laura Bishop of Infinitas Design had a very successful panel experience where there was standing room only in the lecture area.
I believe GSHPA members in the hall - Dragon Drilling, Hafod Renewables, Ifinitas Design, JM Renewables, Kensa Heat Pumps, Kilfrost and Solaris also had a bumper number of visitors too.
If you know of an exhibition that you would like to exhibit at as part of a pavilion with the GSHPA then please let Jen Billings know so that we can make arrangements to contact the organisers and ensure that we secure a good position for GSHPA members. A banner and a few fliers are all that is required and I believe that having a presence at exhibitions like this will definitely pay dividends.
Conclusion
Ground Source Heating is finally taking off as the "go to" alternative heating system.
See Renewable Heating See Renewable Cooling