The Hillhead trade fair for quarrying and construction machinery has been postponed by a year due to the impact of the Covid-19 outbreak.

With Hillhead taking place in 2021 instead of 2020, the organisers of the PlantWorx trade show have agreed to move their event forward by a year also, to 2022, to avoid clashing.

Hillhead, which tales place every two years, had been all set for 23–25 June 2020 at Hillhead Quarry, near Buxton in Derbyshire with a record 550 exhibitors booked. It has now been postponed to 22–24 June 2021, at the same usual location.

Hillhead event director Richard Bradbury said: “The health and safety of exhibitors, visitors, contractors and employees is our number one priority and with the peak of the epidemic predicted to coincide with the show in June, this would be severely compromised.

“Following an extensive consultation process, the decision has been taken to delay the event by a year to allow market conditions to stabilise and to best support the construction and quarrying industry during this challenging period.”

Rob Oliver, chief executive of the Construction Equipment Association, which owns PlantWorx, said: “Of course we didn’t want to postpone our show, but after discussions with the Hillhead management we concluded that it would be in the best interests of our exhibitors and the wider construction and quarrying industries if we reset the clock and allowed Hillhead the diary space in 2021. Few people expected the impact of coronavirus just a couple of weeks ago, so we thought it best to make a quick decision so the industry had some clarity. As a trade association now, we need to focus our resources on helping our members through the unprecedented challenges arising from coronavirus which affects both lives and livelihoods”.

Hillhead and PlantWorx are just two among myriad industry events, meetings and exhibitions – not just in the UK but around the world – to be rescheduled or cancelled because of the pandemic. Vertikal Days, the lifting equipment exhibition, has also been postponed. It had been planned for 13-14 May at Donington Park, Leicestershire. A new date has yet to be set.

Also postponed is the Commercial Vehicle Show, which had been scheduled for 28-30 April at the Birmingham NEC. This has been put back a year to 2021.