WORDS FROM THE EDITOR

SuperExpo 2026 brought close to 3,000 attendees and 109 exhibitors to the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre for three days in June. And while these numbers didn’t break any records, what stood out was not the scale but the temper of the room. People came with jobs in mind and questions ready, and exhibitors were not there to hold ground. They were there to take share in a difficult market. Page 32 carries thirteen exhibitors on what they took to the floor and why.

A fortnight earlier, R+T Asia (see page 40) posted its strongest edition yet in Shanghai: 56,029 visitors and 15,801 international buyers from 118 countries. Its clash with SuperExpo, though, made it quieter than usual for Australian visitors. This was a show all about size: external systems stretching up to 50 metres in width, new wide widths in roller and honeycomb fabrics, and battery and motorisation development that continues at pace. 

But product launches and parties aside, two things happened at SuperExpo that will outlast the show, and they are the same story. The WincovER energy-saving program launched. And, as covered on page 26, Robert Mayer entered the WSAA Hall of Fame. He was appointed chair of the WincovER Committee in 2008 and gave nearly two decades to the science behind window-covering energy ratings, from their BERS origins through to the simulator that went live during expo week. Add to that fourteen years as a WSAA and BMAA director, the vice-chair role at the Australian Fenestration Rating Council from 2018, and the ASBEC, CSIRO and NatHERS relationships that put shading into the national conversation. The industry got its number and honoured the man who built it in the same week. That is the right order of things.

He did not do it alone. This magazine has followed the work since our very first issue in 2008. Dr Rebecca Powell built the methodology across nine years with the association. Peter Lyons was the technical consultant for more than a decade. Ozroll and Hunter Douglas backed the 2021 soft launch that issued more than 4,000 certificates. Hubble ran more than 525,000 simulations. Jason Lewis, co-president of the WSAA, carried it to launch.

What it buys the trade is on page 58. A retailer can enter a postcode, choose a product and hand a customer an independent energy figure and a CO2 number on a certificate from the association.

At the launch on the Gold Coast, a delegate from Poland used question time to tell the seminar what an energy mandate had done to that market. Eight years ago, the delegate said, external shading was not specified on new housing there; regulation now makes it standard, sales have since tripled, and volume that was 80 per cent imported is now 60 per cent made at home. Australia already has a healthy external shading market. What Poland has is a reason for every new house to be in it, and something that, with the right industry support and lobbying at a national level, could supercharge this market.

JAMES BOSTON
Editor & Publisher