NAEC Stoneleigh sits in Warwickshire near Kenilworth, on the Stoneleigh Park estate, and is reached directly from the A46 within reach of the M6, M40, M42 and M69. The most important fact for a carrier, though, is not the approach but the hall: the four halls differ radically in height and vehicle access, so the hall number on your stand confirmation decides vehicle choice more than anything else. We carry stands and exhibits here from Poland and collect them after breakdown.
The postal address and the satnav address are two different things
The venue gives CV8 2LZ as its correspondence postcode but recommends a different one for navigation: CV8 2LH. This is not a detail. A driver who types in the address from the invoice can end up at a different entrance to a large estate than the one he should use. So we take the postcode from the venue materials and the exhibitor instructions rather than from letterhead. The name has a history too: the site was called the National Agricultural Centre from 1963 to 2013, and the venue today is run by the operator named on its own site as Grandstand Stoneleigh Events.
Four halls, four different unloading jobs
The venue quotes over twenty-one thousand square metres across four halls, but treating them as one surface is a mistake that costs a whole build-up day.
- Hall 1 has about three thousand square metres, a maximum internal height around eleven metres, vehicle entry through roller doors and a linkway to Hall 2. This is the hall for heavy and tall exhibits.
- Hall 2 is the largest at roughly four and a half thousand square metres, with a height in the eight to ten metre range, also vehicle entry through roller doors, and a power-floated concrete floor for which the venue publishes a load capacity.
- Hall 2a has about two and a half thousand square metres, but maximum height there drops below four metres, and the venue publishes no vehicle access for it.
- Hall 3 has close to four thousand square metres, its own entrance and a variable height from under three to nearly seven metres, again with no published vehicle access.
The practical conclusion is simple. The same exhibit that enters Hall 1 on a trailer will not even fit Hall 2a for height, and into Hall 3 it will have to be carried from the entrance. So at enquiry stage we ask for the hall number before we calculate anything else. How floor loading and door clearance translate into the method of unloading is set out in the article on unloading an oversized exhibit. Specific values for your own pitch are confirmed in the venue materials and with the organiser, because they differ between halls.
Open ground: two hundred and fifty acres and a private road network
Beyond the halls the venue has around two hundred and fifty acres of grassland, fields and woodland plus an extensive internal network of private roads, used among other things for vehicle presentations and test drives. The venue does not publish a breakdown of that ground into hard and soft surfaces, so for an outdoor display the surface under a specific pitch is confirmed with the organiser. With heavy equipment that is a question about whether you can drive there at all after rain, not about comfort. Similar issues with construction plant are covered in the article on machinery transport to UK sites.
A rule that surprises foreign exhibitors
The venue stipulates that an exhibitor may not bring its own food or drink for sale onto the site, alcohol included, outside the venue catering department and without its approval. For a carrier this is practical information: if the load includes food products intended for tasting or sale on the stand, their admissibility has to be confirmed before loading rather than at the gate. Carrying food to Britain has its own documentary requirements, described in the article on border procedures.
Clean air zones: Warwickshire has none
Neither Kenilworth nor the surrounding towns operate a charging clean air zone. The British list of charging zones covers Bath, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Tyneside. The Birmingham zone covers the centre inside the A4540 ring road and lies about thirty kilometres to the north-west; an approach on the M40, M6 and A46 does not touch it. The rules are gathered in the article on UK clean air zones.
What to settle before arrival
Hall number and stand number. Whether a vehicle may enter the hall for that stand. The navigation postcode and the designated site entrance. How vehicles are booked in and passes collected. Who supplies the forklift and where the vehicle goes after unloading. We do not quote hours or dates, because the organiser sets them separately for each edition and they change from year to year. The method for scheduling backwards is in the article on the build-up and breakdown calendar.
What we do at our end
We collect the load in Poland, and from exhibitors in Czechia, Slovakia, Austria and Hungary we gather it through our hub. The Kielce base sits about 4 km from the fairground, a few minutes away, works around the clock and lets a stand be assembled into one consignment before departure. A groupage vehicle waits for the next scheduled line departure. On the British side the load usually passes through a cross-dock in Milton Keynes, which gives two transhipments across the route. On site we deliver to the handover point and the venue equipment takes over. We commit to an hour at the gate rather than an hour of unloading, because the sequence inside the grounds is set by the venue.
Groupage or a dedicated vehicle
The threshold runs at roughly a third of a trailer, about twelve pallets. At Stoneleigh a second criterion applies, stronger than volume: the height and mass of a single item. An exhibit destined for a hall eleven metres high is usually unsuitable for groupage, because it does not tolerate transhipment and needs a vehicle matched to the entry. A modular stand of panels and graphics travels as groupage without difficulty. We break down that decision in the article on choosing between FTL and groupage.
Sources
- NAEC Stoneleigh: halls, space specifications, directions and the satnav postcode
- GOV.UK: list of British charging clean air zones
Got a hall number and an item list? Send them with the organiser materials through the quotation form and we will match the vehicle to that particular hall. See also the exhibition logistics page.
