Leading flightcase and speaker cabinet solutions specialist Penn Elcom showed its latest ideas and technologies at the PLASA 2012 exhibition, Earl’s Court Exhibition Centre, London, for the first time with all key brands in the Group based on a single booth.
In addition to the latest ideas from Penn Elcom, the newest products from Pro Audio Stash, Rackz and CLD Distribution all attracted interest over the four day show.
Penn Elcom chairman Roger Willems states, “It was a good opportunity to meet many of our existing customers from the UK as well as make some new contacts”.
The integrated stand also highlighted Penn’s quality metalworking and manufacturing capabilities in the UK, and how this and other synergies help fuel the development of innovative and cost-efficient product lines across the sister companies.
“Overall this enables us to offer a very ‘joined-up’ range of complimentary products,” confirms Willems.
A major highlight on the Penn Elcom section of the stand was live demonstrations of Penn’s innovative new CaseDesigner software, a product that has been a massive success with case makers throughout Europe.
Case Designer is a completely unique tool for case makers and their clients, offering an impressive new and efficient design, order, calculate and build programme.
For Rackz, “Sharing the stand with Penn Elcom was great,” enthuses MD Dave Roberts. “It allowed a lot of crossover between clients looking at one brand or product line who were also interested in several others”.
Joining the Penn Elcom group a year ago has enabled Rackz to move forward and continue to be at the forefront of invention, in the process bringing some exciting new products to the market.
Attracting particular interest for Rackz were the CoolRac, Cadenza wood racks, Sloping Top Racks and the brand new Kudos range available in wall mounting or free standing variants – all made in the UK. It is the first time that Rackz products have been shown at PLASA for a couple of years, and they proved to be a big hit.
Rob Platt from CLD Distribution comments that the quality of visitors at PLASA was generally good and they had plenty of conversations involving large numbers of products and long term contracts, “PLASA is ideal for meeting long term customers face-to-face,” he observes.
Fibre optic products were the centre of attention, with CLD currently focusing on developing its own range of these.
Penn Elcom has recently spent nearly £1 million re-tooling its East Sussex manufacturing plant in Hastings and relocated its Newcastle site to a new 110,000 square foot facility. Its workforce in the UK has expanded steadily every year for the last three years and is now up 40% on 2009.