PETERSFIELD ON SHOW: Life-Changing Firm Wows NEC Crowds With Kitchens That Move

Petersfield has been thrust into the national business spotlight after a local accessibility firm wowed industry crowds with home fittings designed to change daily life for wheelchair users and disabled residents.

Granberg UK, whose showroom is in Bellamy House near the corner of Station Road and Winton Road, has returned from the Kitchen, Bathroom, Bedroom trade expo at Birmingham’s NEC with fresh enquiries, Swedish backing and a place already booked for the next show in 2028.

That might sound like trade-show chatter. It is not. For a town that often sees its business stories reduced to shop openings, closures and car-park grumbles, this is something sharper: a Petersfield company taking a practical, life-changing product to one of the biggest stages in its industry.

The Stand That Turned Heads

According to local reporting by the Petersfield Post, representatives of Granberg UK showcased a range of height-adjustable systems at KBB 2026, a major biennial event for the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom sector.

The firm produces systems that allow worktops, islands, wall cabinets, appliance shelves and wardrobe rails to move to usable heights. In ordinary marketing language, that is accessibility. In real life, it can mean the difference between someone needing help to make lunch and being able to use their own kitchen with dignity.

The company’s stand reportedly covered 20 square metres and displayed the latest Granberg products to suppliers, kitchen firms and industry visitors. Its Swedish owners were said to be so impressed by the response that the business has already signed up for KBB 2028.

Nick Collyer, managing director of Independent 4 Life, which accommodates the Granberg showroom in Petersfield, told the paper that the show had put the firm “in the shop window”. He said the team was still working through emails and enquiries after the event, with kitchen companies among those showing interest.

Why This Matters Beyond One Company

There is an obvious good-news-business angle here: local firm does well at national expo. But the Petersfield interest runs deeper than that.

Granberg UK sits in the part of the economy where design, care, independence and practical engineering meet. The products are not luxury gimmicks. They are aimed at people whose homes often need to work harder than standard design allows.

For wheelchair users, disabled people, older residents and families adapting to changing needs, the built environment can either open life up or quietly shut it down. A kitchen worktop at the wrong height is not just inconvenient. A wall cabinet that cannot be reached is not just annoying. These are daily barriers, repeated over and over, in the place where people should have the most control.

That is why a Petersfield showroom for this sort of equipment matters. It gives residents, occupational therapists, installers and families somewhere tangible to see how accessible design works. It also puts the town’s name next to a sector that is likely to grow as more people look for ways to live independently at home for longer.

A Town Business With A National Pitch

Petersfield likes to think of itself as independent, practical and quietly inventive. This story fits that image neatly.

Granberg’s UK operation is not simply selling a product from a brochure. Its local presence means people can see the units, understand the mechanisms and imagine how an adapted kitchen or bathroom might work before making serious decisions. That showroom role is especially important in accessibility, where a wrong choice can be expensive, frustrating and emotionally draining.

The company has also had products featured on BBC’s DIY SOS, according to the Petersfield Post report. That kind of exposure matters because accessibility design often only becomes visible when a television programme shows the human stakes clearly: a family under pressure, a home that no longer works, and a transformation that restores ordinary routines.

KBB gives the same idea a different audience. Instead of viewers at home, Granberg was speaking to the trade: designers, suppliers, fitters and companies that can carry accessible thinking into more projects.

The Bigger Accessibility Test

The uncomfortable truth is that accessible design is still too often treated as a specialist add-on rather than a normal part of good building and refurbishment. People adapt homes only when forced to, councils and agencies wrestle with budgets, and families can spend months trying to piece together advice.

Businesses like Granberg UK challenge that mindset. Their systems say, in effect, that a kitchen does not have to be fixed at one height for one imagined user. It can be flexible. It can move. It can serve more than one body, more than one need and more than one stage of life.

That is exactly the kind of thinking that should appeal in East Hampshire, where communities are ageing, housing pressure is constant, and more people want to stay in familiar homes rather than move because a building stops working for them.

What Petersfield Should Take From It

The headline is cheerful: a Petersfield firm impressed at the NEC. But the lesson for the town is bigger.

Local economic strength is not only about filling high-street units or counting footfall, important as those are. It is also about having businesses with specialist knowledge, national reach and a clear reason to exist. Granberg UK appears to be doing precisely that from a base a short walk from Petersfield station.

If the latest enquiries turn into orders, partnerships or wider recognition, the benefits will not just be for one showroom. They will reinforce Petersfield’s reputation as a town where useful, high-value, human-centred businesses can grow.

And in a week when local government, planning and devolution stories have been heavy with uncertainty, there is something refreshing about a Petersfield business coming back from a national stage with momentum.

This was not another gloomy tale of decline. It was a local firm saying: look what we make, look who it helps, and look where Petersfield can show up.

Source: Petersfield Post / Liphook Herald reporting by Paul Ferguson, published 20 May 2026, “Life-changing Petersfield firm puts itself in shop window at NEC”.