A remarkable show by any standards.  By 9am on the first day of LAMMA (20/21 January), a reported 5000 cars had parked up, with many of the occupants enjoying a special value Early Bird breakfast. The show still has many of the elements of the no-frills “let’s put the show on right here” approach adopted by the original organisers.  Free entry, free parking, low(ish) cost stand space with ‘everyone-whose-anyone’ in the farm equipment market represented – and no side-shows or unrelated stands included to fill space.

That said, since the show was acquired by Briefing Media (publishers of Farmers Guardian), there have been significant improvements. First the move from the Lincolnshire Showground at Newark to the Peterborough venue of the East of England show with its much better facilities.  But even that move nearly got derailed when the show ground was virtually submerged during 2014.  There were rumours that if that happened again, then the organisers would consider a move to the NEC – where stand space could have increased four-fold, and the show would have surely lost it soul.

Well, if anyone up there was listening, 2016 was just perfect weather-wise.  Cold and crisp mornings, delightful winter sunshine during most of the daytime.  An outdoor show in January is always going to be at the mercy of the weather, either for the showground itself or for the effects on transport.

The most visible evolution at LAMMA is that much, more is now under cover.  Many of the major tractor suppliers had built their own covered arenas. You could now visit the AGCO hall, the CNH hall, the John Deere hall, and they were joined by Kubota with a compact covered stand.  Added to which the vast Peterborough Arena was supplemented by 8 more indoor halls, providing the show with much more covered display space than ever before.

At the end of the first day, the organisers presented the LAMMA 16 Innovation Awards at a complimentary supper, sponsored by steel company SSAB, and well attended by standholders. It was another step up in modernising an event that has become the flagship UK farm equipment show, and, who knows, may yet rival the likes of Agritechnica as the premier European event.

Free entry is an obvious draw, but how long will the organisers resist counting and badging visitors? (cars are only indicator of visitor numbers). That said, the numbers (an estimated 40,000) are impressive, and crucially the standholders themselves recognise the quality and the profile of those who attend the show.

At the Awards, the overall Innovation Award was won by a father and son team who run Target Set Technology based at Ely for their side ridge injection system that injects liquid products directly into the potato ridge, right at the root zone, which was shown fitted to a Standen machine.  Other winners were Poclain Hydraulics, Kverneland for its Isobus reversible plough, Vicon for the Fastbale round baler and Bryce Suma Post Drivers.

Irish inventor Pauric Fay won the IAGRE SSAB Safety Award for TrakJak, a two-wheel jacking device for use on tractors when being serviced or repaired, whilst former Coleg Sir Gar student, Cenivydd Hughes who now works for the Tallis Amos Group won the IAgrE Student Award for his development of a new log splitter.

A full show report will appear in the next edition of Service Dealer.