Jeff Patchell is at ISH 2017 reporting for our Plumbing Connection community.

ISH is the greatest plumbing show on earth and happens every two years in Frankfurt, Germany.

I’ve been in training for the past two months to walk the aisles over the next four days past a large portion of the 2,482 exhibitors and try spot some items of interest for our Plumbing Connection community.

Frankfurt is being kind to visitors, no snow this year and a balmy early spring high of 10°C but once the sun goes down it’s a bit of a different story.

Tomorrow is the first day of ISH and there will be in excess of 50,000 trade visitors passing through the turn-styles. Included in that mob will be a sizeable number of plumbing consultants, suppliers, merchants and contractors from Australia.

In the meantime, I spent today at a World Plumbing Council (WPC) board meeting hosted by Messe Frankfurt, the organisation that runs ISH. As usual Australia was over-represented given the size of our market.

The WPC is a not-for-profit organisation that aims to improve access to safe water and sanitation for the world’s population. It is poorly supported by the suppliers of the industry, who rely on plumbers to specify and install their products – and garnering greater support for this group is just one of the WPC’s current strategic aims.

WPC is a noble cause that is gradually making its market across the globe, including in a number of third-world regions. If only those people who can barely find a glass of water a day to survive on, could sight some of the eccentric products we’ll come across tomorrow – they would be truly amazed!

I look forward to doing more ISH updates for you this week.