Industry news — Lift & Hoist Australasia (LHA) soon to be launched

Lift & Hoist Australasia (LHA) soon to be launched

LHI Magazine coming to Australia

A new magazine covering the Australasian lifting and rigging marketplace will help deliver safety messages to end users—and it has signed-up a guest columnist to help.

Trade media covers all industries of note. Most sectors don’t use these magazines, websites, and related platforms to their advantage. Only a minority of vendors advertise and editors can find it difficult to gather or generate meaningful content. It’s a missed opportunity because a quality trade magazine can serve as an effective route to market and deliver meaningful messages to an engaged audience. There are other benefits too.

The majority of industries would be worse off without independent publishers to promote a sector and hold it accountable, so we’ve always tried to support those that have dipped into our market with commentary and advertising support where we can. True, it takes research to find the good circulations from bad and the publishers who are there for the long-term versus those looking to make a quick buck. And few have been lifting and rigging centric.

Lift & Hoist Australasia (LHA), a new bi-monthly, regionally-targeted publication, ticks the right boxes and fills a gap in the region, covering specialised lifting, rigging, and safety solutions across a myriad of end-user markets.

Ahead of the imminent publication of Issue 1—four further editions will be produced in 2019—I gratefully accepted an invitation from the publishers to pen a guest column. In fact, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity, not to shout about my own business but to continue to address concerns about the lifting industry’s shortcomings.

I remain hopeful that we can produce a new generation of lifting industry professionals who campaign for certain principles, such as the importance of working with specialists and technical experts on all matters related to lifting equipment and height safety; and wholesale acceptance of a third party to deliver the same competency-based training content all over the world, tailored to each geography’s standards. I feel duty-bound to lead by example.

Upon acceptance of the invitation, the magazine’s publisher and I had an interesting conversation about the status of our market. Much of the trends that impact my own company are shared by LHA. A healthy industry is good for all of us. It’s interesting how the magazine closely monitors information from the think-tank, Australia Institute (AI), for example, which says the country’s manufacturing industry is poised for recovery. In fact, in the magazine’s media pack (the document produced by a publisher that includes circulation breakdown and advertising rates etc.) they say, “productivity has rebounded close to its previous peak with the sector currently enjoying its largest improvement in employment conditions in a decade.”

In the spotlight

I wholeheartedly welcome LHA to the marketplace and hope that its pages report on further positivity and genuine evolution in the years to come. Of course, it doesn’t promise to look at our industry through rose-tinted spectacles—and that’s important. LHA is committed to delivering the most up-to-date and forthright information for the region’s industrial lifting community. Independent editorial and honesty are its core values. It promises to serve the interests of readers and media partners to the best of its ability and always with propriety, diligence, and integrity.

In other words, we’re in the spotlight, and we’ve got to recognise the responsibility that brings. Never before has Australasia had a committed publication designed to support manufacturers, suppliers, and end users of integrated technologies that lift and move personnel and materials across multiple industrial sectors. The supply and use of overhead cranes, hoists, forklift trucks, cargo handlers, load restraints, and other equipment will now be exposed to new scrutiny.

The magazine’s owners have a proven track record. I’ve noted the impact its sister title, Lift & Hoist International (LHI) has had, based in Heartland Publishing International Ltd.’s native UK. Since Ranger became Australia’s first full member nearly a decade ago, it’s been my belief that the Lifting Equipment Engineers Association (LEEA) will drive global change in our industry. I’m encouraged, therefore, that LHI works closely with the leading authority on lifting equipment and has promised that LHA will do the same. Over recent years, the association has grown its presence in the Australasian market, and we recently welcomed Justin Boehm as a representative in Australia and New Zealand.

I’ll conclude with a call for content ideas. As I said in the first submission I delivered only days ago, it is as much your column as it is mine. I have a notebook full of ideas about subjects to explore, from roundslings to relocation, but I’m happy to look into matters from industry. Perhaps you are an end user that’s new to sourcing rigging gear and are getting conflicting messages from suppliers. Or do you have questions on inspection policy or discard criteria? Should you be working with a local provider, a conglomerate, or someone else? Maybe something altogether different is troubling you about the world of lifting and rigging equipment.

For more information contact us on 1300 SLINGS

www.ranger.com.au