PLAST 2015
PLAST 2015 has cemented the Milan-based plastics and rubber event's reputation as one of the world's truly international industry shows.
The 17th PLAST drew to a close on Saturday (May 9th 2015) after drawing in around 50,000 visitors - a figure on par with the number of attendees for PLAST's last outing in 2012. Over one-third of these 50,000 people were from overseas, with delegates coming from all over the world, but mostly from Europe, the US and Asia.
Indeed, there were more international visitors from overseas in 2015 than in 2012, with 40 delegations accounting for 40 countries with 300 members. This increase in foreign attendance offset the slight decline in Italian visitors compared to 2012, but this was a trend forecast by organisers, who stated that in spite of the ongoing challenges facing the European market, PLAST 2015 maintains its status as an excellent event for making contacts and viewing a good cross section of the global plastics and rubber market, with 1,558 exhibiting companies in total.
Managing Director of PLAST organiser Promaplast Mario Maggiani is keen to build on the success of 2015 by maintaining the show's three satellite fairs: Rubber, 3DPLAST and StartPLAST. These events will become permanent features and new thematic zones are already in their development phase for next time around, when PLAST will break its triennial cycle and take place from September 26th-30th 2017, rather than its previously anticipated May 2018 date.
"Thanks partly to the requests from exhibitors or potential exhibitors, now that this year's fair has ended we will get straight to work to stay one step ahead and embrace the new business
opportunities and the new technological frontiers of our world," said Maggiani.
"We will be organising a number of thematic areas representing the future, one of which will be recycling. It is a sector where significant financial resources are being invested, and Italian companies have always been at the forefront of innovation. The other major theme we want to dedicate increasing space to is composites, which are finding applications, including niche applications, by taking advantage of the benefits of plastics combined with reinforcement agents. These are advanced materials used in leading industries such as automaking, aerospace, aeronautics, shipbuilding: all sectors where Italian industry is a world leader."
PLAST has cemented its place in the top tier of international plastics and rubber events and has proved itself as a great meeting place for preeminent industry players and as the ultimate venue for growing industry knowledge with its varied conferences and workshops. The Milan event is all of this, but organisers stated that most importantly, PLAST is a place for Italian companies to "bolster their commercial contacts on both the national and international level".
