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From March 15th to 18th, Panel Rey exhibited at BUILD26, the annual Convention and Expo organized by the Association of the Wall and Ceiling Industry (AWCI), held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. You could find us at Booth 836 — four days of conversations with contractors, distributors, specifiers, and colleagues from across the wall and ceiling industry.
It is the largest trade show dedicated specifically to our field, and that specificity is the whole point.
145
exhibitors on the show floor
2,000+
wall and ceiling professionals in attendance
A Room Where Nobody Needs the Basics Explained
Most construction trade shows cover everything from heavy equipment to HVAC. BUILD26 does not. Every exhibitor on that floor, and nearly every visitor walking it, works with drywall, ceilings and acoustics, metal framing, plaster, EIFS, or insulation. The entire building speaks the same technical language.
That changes the nature of the conversation. Nobody at Booth 836 needed a primer on joint treatment or acoustical ratings. Visitors arrived already knowing what to ask, and their questions were specific: how a system performs under a particular condition, how a product behaves for a crew working against a schedule, what makes one solution the right call over another. Those are the questions worth traveling for.
A trade show floor is where a brand is measured by what it can explain — not by what it can claim.
Standing Among the Industry’s Leading Manufacturers
There is real meaning in being one of the manufacturers on that floor. AWCI convenes the specialty contractors, manufacturers, and suppliers who set the technical standards of the wall and ceiling industry in the United States and Canada. Exhibiting there means presenting your work to an audience fully qualified to evaluate it — and being compared, side by side, with the best in the field.
For Panel Rey, a manufacturer with four decades of experience in gypsum systems, that comparison is not something to avoid. It is precisely why we come.
What We Brought, and What We Took Home
We arrived to share what makes our building solutions work in the field. We left with a great deal more than that:
New relationships. Meaningful conversations with professionals who had not yet worked with the Panel Rey brand.
Technical dialogue. Detailed exchanges about performance, installation, and system compatibility with people who install these products for a living.
A read on where the industry is heading. Four days of exposure to the innovations, concerns, and priorities shaping the wall and ceiling market right now.
Visibility for our U.S. presence. A national stage to show that Panel Rey is investing in this market for the long term.
Part of a Larger Commitment
Showing up at BUILD26 is one piece of a broader effort. Growing responsibly in the United States means being present on three fronts at once: industrially, so product reaches customers efficiently; commercially, so distributors and contractors have real support behind them; and professionally, within the associations where this industry discusses its own standards and future.
A booth number is a small thing. But being in the room, year after year, with something worth showing — that is how a manufacturer becomes a trusted name rather than an unfamiliar one.
Thank You for Stopping By
To everyone who visited Booth 836, asked a hard question, or simply introduced themselves — thank you. Conversations like those are the reason we invest in being there.
Our appreciation goes to AWCI for organizing an event of this caliber, and to the wall and ceiling community for the openness with which it received us. We look forward to the next one.
