PestTech 2013 - 21st birthday celebrations

There was a celebratory mood at this year”s PestTech held in its usual venue, the National Motorcycle Museum, on 6 November. The organisers, NPTA, had asked all the exhibitors to join-in the birthday fun to celebrate the 21 years of PestTech events. The result was balloons, raffles, a tombola, various competitions and even the opportunity to try your hand at pontoon.

Twenty one years it might be, (read all about the early years in our Pest Tech comes of age article) but PestTech this year was as popular as ever. Unfortunately there were delays on the surrounding motorways and some visitors complained of long journey times, but this may well have worked the event’s advantage, as there was a steady flow of visitors throughout the day – rather than the bottleneck which can occur in the morning. Whilst there was still more than enough visitors to keep everyone happy, the consensus of opinion was that numbers were slightly down.

PestTech or PestEx?
Exhibitors certainly seemed well pleased if the views of Dan England from PestFix are anything to go by. “PestTech is our favourite exhibition,” he enthused. “Our target customers are the small to medium sized pest control business and that’s exactly who comes to PestTech. We met loads of our customers. We enjoy PestEx, but feel it’s more geared to the larger manufacturers wanting to trade internationally – which we aren’t.”

Overall the day followed its usual format. As soon as the doors opened at 09.00 visitors flooded in. With the same three rooms full-to-capacity with exhibitors, it takes some determination to visit them all. It was for this reason of not trying to cram too much into the day, that NPTA decided to scale-back on the number of seminars held. To see if this was successful read our Was less, more feature.

Rodenticides discussed at the workshop
As ever, the Pest Control News workshop was well supported and, as it traditionally does, tackles a controversial topic. Not surprisingly this year it discussed the far from secure future for second-generation anticoagulant rodenticides (SGARs). In previous years this would have been chaired by Killgerm’s Jonathan Peck who always loved the cut and thrust of a good debate, so this year, Killgerm’s new managing director, Rupert Broome, took centre stage.

Blood volunteers
Always happy to get involved, nearly 100 pest controllers volunteered to give a blood sample and so participate in the hantavirus survey being undertaken during PestTech. Read all about this study here.

At Pest publications we were delighted to present our fourth annual Best Product Award 2013 during PestTech. Voted for by Pest readers, XL8, manufactured by County Down-based Lance Lab, took the top award. In what was a closely fought battle, Formidor ant bait from BASF Pest Control Solutions took second place with Bell Laboratories” Detex non-tox soft bait in a very creditable third place. Read about the Best Product award here.

Outdoor events suffered from the bad weather
In previous years the gods must have been looking after PestTech as usually the popular outdoor events are held in bright and sunny weather – not this year though! However, the enthusiasm of first-time mole trap demonstrator, Jeff Nichols, was not dampened even if his audience was a little wet under foot.

But shooting range popular
Also new this year was a ‘have a go yourself’ airgun riffle range. Sensibly they held court undercover. Organised by the Airgun Training & Education Organisation (ATEO) and using guns provided by BSA (who also had an exhibition stand) the range certainly proved popular. Chatting to Richard Ough of ATEO he said: “We have had people of all levels of experience having a go. Right from complete first-timers, some of whom were remarkably talented, to experienced and proficient shots.”

Dancing the night away
The day was rounded-off with the popular and full-to-capacity Pest Control News dinner. There was one guest missing – master of ceremonies, Jonathan Peck. As would have been his wish, he would not have wanted to have put any sort of dampener on the evening, so delegates all stood and drank a toast before inducting him into the Hall of Fame – an initiative he launched in 2007 – see here.

Breaking away from the tradition of after dinner speakers, cover artists for Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin graced the stage, bringing to life the classics of The Rat Pack. Two scantily dressed show girls strutted their stuff, to the delight of the male members of the audience, before guests also took to the floor. The most memorable being diminutive Irish Brendan dancing with extra tall Jackie from PestWest – good sports both.

Watch-out for further coverage!
Readers should watch-out for further reports from PestTech 2013 in the next Pest magazine, due out in early December.

An archway of 21st balloons greeted visitors