On four days, 29 May through 1 June, a unique combination of several trade fairs will be taking place in Milan, Italy, under the joint umbrella of Fiera Milano’s Innovation Alliance.
For the first time, the following trade fairs will take place simultaneously:
Ipack-Ima – packaging, with a separate area under the heading Ipack-Mat for packaging materials; organized by Ipack-Ima, a joint-venture of UCIMA (Italian Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Association) and Fiera Milano;
Print4All – itself a fusion of three fairs: Converflex, Grafitalia and Inprinting – for flexible packaging, offset printing, and digital and industrial printing; organized by Fiera Milano, ACIMGA (Italian Association of Machinery Manufacturers for the Graphic, Converting and Paper Industry) and ARGI (Italian Association of Graphic Industry Suppliers);
Plast – plastics; organized by Promaplast, part of AMAPLAST (Italian Plastics and Rubber Processing Machinery and Moulds Manufacturers’ Association); initially planned for 2017, the event was moved to fit in with this year’s combined event;
Intralogistica – packaging logistics; organized by Deutsche Messe (Hannover Messe) and Ipack- Ima;
Meat-Tech – meat processing and packaging; organized by Ipack-Ima.
A majority of exhibitors consists of Italian machine manufacturers in the packaging industry, as well as other machine manufacturers and material suppliers. The packaging industry’s larger international trade fairs (Interpack, K, drupa) are dominated by the German industry, whereas Ipack-Ima is the only international fair where the Italian, Eastern European and Turkish options of such machinery are in the majority.
Fiera Milano is the second largest exhibition space in the world. Ipack-Ima and the other fairs take place every three or four years there, but mostly separately. The combination of these fairs this year is expected to attract 150,000 visitors. So far, exhibition space has been booked by close to 2,700 exhibitors. At least 50 companies from Asia have already signed up as exhibitors, among whom there are two Indian companies—Ballyfabs International and Hindustan Adhesives. Packaging South Asia’s editor in Europe, Ron Augustin will cover the event for us. He can be contacted at europeaneditor@ippgroup.in.
Last year, Fiera Milano and UCIMA, owners of the Ipack-Ima trade fair, had signed a cooperation agreement with Messe Düsseldorf’s interpack. Under the agreement, the trade fair organizers provide mutual support between Ipack-Ima in Milan and the interpack alliance trade fairs in China (swop), India (pacprocess India, foodpex India, indiapack), Iran (pacprocess Tehran) and Russia (upakovka).
