The company suffered severe damage to its Birmingham manufacturing plant during the recent floods in the UK, and had hoped to have time to recover from the damage. However, the situation was exacerbated by a reoccurrence of the drainage problems over the week-end of 1 September, prompting CEO Sammy DeHavilland to make a formal statement:
"We consider the PLASA Exhibition to be the most important in the calendar; however the recent flooding has forced us to focus on the continuity of supply to our customers, rather then attending the show - it has become obvious we cannot do both.
DeHavilland explained: "Ironically the main problem, which involves the run-off of excess water from the site, was not our responsibility until last year, when we expanded the factory and took on the extra space. We are lucky enough to be carrying a good stock of our main products, but the ingress of water into our CNC machinery has caused real problems. It is well known that we design and manufacture our own exhibition stands, this year was a complete new build following the new layout of the show - a significant part of the stand structure was also destroyed in the second flood."
DeHavilland added that the disappointment was compounded by the fact that PLASA 2007 would have seen the launch of the company's new Viper Array System, and the latest version of its most successful product, the Micro 88 TEC.
DeHavilland concludes: "It looked like we had got ourselves back on stream, but after this weekend's events the decision has been taken out of our hands. Obviously we are devastated, but our commitment to our distributors and their customers as always takes precedence, and the sad fact is that if we were to attend the show, we would not be able to meet our commitments; because we have made this decision, we will be able to - that single piece of harsh reality has made a hard choice easy."
(Lee Baldock)
