TuV is tough
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Tread with interest the letter Ifrom Chris Draycott, sales director of S Jones Truck Centre (CM 3-9 November). I guess that one of the main reasons for some UK companies failing to exhibit at the Hanover commercial vehicle show is the extremely tough trade barrier the Germans have erected over the years, called the German TuV system.
In our case we spent a lot of money gaining TuV accreditation on four of our products, but to make exhibiting at Hanover worthwhile we would need it on all of our models. The ability of the German engineers to continually move the goal posts around does not make this an attractive possibility
However at the NEC in March and the 1RTE show in May, there is an opportunity for the UK bodybuilder, trailer builder and
component supplier to show their wares exist.
Our products are as good, if not better, than our competitors on the Continent and sometimes we should be saying just that as loud as possible. We are competing in a market place which is extremely tough and for which any foreign company is given a free rein to work in—sometimes using unfair "home" subsidies.
Level the playing field and I guess we'd all have a go at the German market.
David Browning, Managing director, The Ray Smith Group, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire.