Optrafair preview: 40 years and counting for flagship event

The UK optical sector’s broadest and longest running exhibition returns to the NEC Birmingham next month.

It marks four decades at the cutting edge of spectacle frames, lenses, contact lenses, equipment and optical services.

The show, first held in London in 1978, has changed beyond recognition in recent years, but stayed true to its ethos of ‘by the sector, for the sector’.

Now regularly staged in Birmingham, the busy exhibition hall and its surrounding conference represents a meeting of minds for eye care professionals, manufacturers, laboratories, suppliers and distributors, professional bodies and educators.

Since 1917, Optrafair organisers the Federation of Manufacturing Opticians has been involved in all aspects of manufacturing, importing and wholesaling of products and services for the UK ophthalmic industry.