IDEST and IDEST Ltd could be found on stand 325 in Hall 2 of the Go Diving Show held on 28 Feb 28 and 1 March, 2026 at the NAEC Stoneleigh Exhibition Centre.
The stand, kindly provided by IDEST Ltd, displayed information about cylinder testing and technician certification. It included various tools used during cylinder testing and a couple of cylinders for passing divers to look inside using drop lights. Alistair Reynolds represented IDEST Ltd with Dave Crockford and Nick Clark representing IDEST Worldwide Ltd. We were kindly joined by Howard Bardsley and Geoff Shearn from M60 Scuba Ltd (3Y/TC003) and Stuart Smith from TSR Scuba Limited (C1/TC022) to represent test and training centres.
The show appeared well attended, especially judging by the queues of cars trying to enter the site. The various seminars and presentations appeared to be a big draw with many of these standing room only.
Relatively few divers appeared interested in talking to us about cylinder testing, although our “wheel of fortune” and free IDEST merchandise was very popular with diver’s children with many mugs, water bottles, pens, badges and stickers being given out.
We did receive a steady stream of divers, and dive centres stopping to chat about our training courses and technician certifications. This is great news for training centres and will hopefully convert to actual course bookings. We will also follow up with the potential new centres to hopefully bring them into the scheme.
One diver who did talk to us, raised that his nearest test centre was not an IDEST member, and he was finding that he could not get his cylinder filled at IDEST centres. We explained the reasons behind this, that fillers at work need to be sure of the quality of the cylinder test and that this is only possible through a certification scheme like IDEST. The diver responded positively and said he would be using an IDEST centre in future.
It was also great to see and talk to many technicians from our existing centres, getting your feedback on IDEST first hand is very helpful.
All in all we were pleased to attend the Go Diving Show and felt it worthwhile for us to do so. We will look at how to improve our future communication with divers (and shooters). Maybe next year we will consider presenting on one of the stages too. Please let us know your thoughts and ideas via by email to admin@idest.co.uk
