Timber Processing & Energy Expo 2020 canceled due to COVID-19

It is with great disappointment, but mixed with the satisfaction in knowing that it’s the right thing to do, Hatton-Brown Expositions, LLC announces the cancellation of the Timber Processing & Energy Expo scheduled September 30 to October 2 at the Portland Exposition Center in Portland, Oregon.

The next TP&EE, which is held every other year, will be held as scheduled on September 27-29, 2022.

This past May, with regard to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis, the Oregon Governor announced the state’s three-phase opening plan. TP&EE falls under “Phase 3: Highest Risk Activities” which states, “Large gatherings and events are not possible until a reliable treatment or prevention is available. As a result, these are cancelled or significantly modified through at least September.” The Portland area is now only entering Phase 1.

We considered delaying the event until later this year or even into next spring 2021, and solicited insights and recommendations from many key exhibitor companies and from managers with several forest products producer companies. It became obvious that delaying the event would still not guarantee that the state would have opened to large venues by then, and even if the venue is open, that forest products companies already imposing employee travel restriction policies very possibly would still not be allowing their employees to travel or at the very least would still maintain limited travel policies and only to certain activities. Obviously, forest products company personnel are the key attendance for TP&EE.

There was also consideration given to delaying the event until later in 2021, when perhaps the crisis had passed, but we recognized that several other forest products industry events have long been scheduled for that period—events in which we have exhibited our magazines for decades—and we did not feel compelled to insert TP&EE into this mix in 2021 to only complicate matters.

We’ve always considered TP&EE an industry family reunion. The 2020 event, which would have been the sixth TP&EE, was nearing an exhibitor space sellout with more than 160 exhibitors already signed up. In addition, a special ceremony and reception was planned for the presentation of the Timber Processing magazine 2020 Person of the Year. We’re as heartbroken as you are that COVID-19 continues to alter how the world operates. “Safety,” long a point of pride in wood products mill and machinery operations, has taken on unimaginable importance even in the routine of our daily lives.

TP&EE is not going away however. The next TP&EE will be held September 27-29, 2022 at the Portland Exposition Center. We hope, and certainly expect, that a solution to the current virus will have been successfully implemented long before then. TP&EE 2022 will be better and safer than ever.

It is the intention of Hatton-Brown Expositions to simply carry-over the existing floorplan of signed–up exhibitors from the cancelled 2020 event into the 2022 event. Payments for square footage already made by exhibitors will be placed in an account for safeguarding, and payments still outstanding will now be due May 1, 2022. The square footage costs that were in place for the 2020 event will remain the same for 2022.

If it’s true that time flies, then it will move at the speed of sound once the virus crisis is controlled. TP&EE 2022 will be here before you know it.