Chris and Katie took time out of their usual schedule last week to visit METSTRADE 2018 in Amsterdam for the first time.

It is a jam packed trade show with a few interesting statistics! It is the world’s biggest and most visited B2B leisure marine equipment show. Last year the number of British visitors was second only to the Italians. Seadub was one company out of the 23% of visitors that are from manufacturing.

We were pleased that the Rigging Projects stand was buzzing with interest. They were even busy demonstrating while everyone else had a “networking social” after hours on the Tuesday.

Setting off at a fast pace(!) meant that we managed to cover 80% of the show in our first day – zig-zagging up and down the halls, scanning to find companies of interest. With a list of over 1,600 exhibitors it was hard to narrow this down beforehand. Chris’ fitbit registered 22,000 steps and we only got there a little before lunchtime.

The number of faces from our time in the yachting industry that we ran into randomly during our visit was staggering. It was great to be able to say hi and have a quick catch up.

John Walker, Captain of a new Baltic Yacht, arranged a meeting with Baltic Yachts on Wednesday morning. Having dealt with them for so long by phone and email it was fantastic to be able to put faces to names. We look forward to working with Baltic Yachts on future projects.

We finished our visit in the Superyacht Pavilion and it was fantastic to be able to see Mike Yorston of Aere fenders. Mike looked after us while we were running SY Gaia, going over and above as our Westmarine Account Manager, during the yard periods that we had in Newport Shipyard and when we headed down to the Caribbean. It must be 8 years since we had seen him.

I will be looking out for the KLM flights to Amsterdam so that I can book our trip for next year. If you are in the Marine Equipment Industry then this is definitely the show for you.