The Plast India show with the theme “the future is here” opened at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi on 4 February 2009. The show will run to 9 February and is spread over 25 halls and 15 hangars and covers an area of 8,00,0000 square feet (almost 75,000 square meters). There are about 1495 participants at the show. There are 1020 Indian exhibitors and 475 overseas exhibitors from 30 countries. There are some new initiatives this year which include – the energy saver pavilion, the recycling pavilion, Agri Park and the end user pavilion. At the opening Arvind Mehta, President, Plast India Foundation said, “Plast India 2009 will open the door to the world for Indian plastic products. Growing on the demand we see an extremely good future for the Indian plastics industry. Besides, foreign players are ready to invest and we expect a lot of joint ventures to take place during the course of the six day event.”
We visited the show on the day it opened and the initial feed back we have received from a few exhibitors is not very positive, especially those exhibiting in the hangars. Apparently, locations allotted are not as per the layouts distributed earlier. Some exhibitors went to the extent of saying, “if problems like lighting, and space were not sorted out soon they would wrap up in a day or two.” One the other hand, one of the exhibitors commented that there were a lot of quality visitors at the show, although there were no business queries as yet there were a number of visitors interested in technology investments in their companies and curious about the latest advances that have come about in the industry.
There are a number of new products that have also been launched at the show. One of them was the automatic viscosity control system which we saw at the ATE stand. The company has developed this product only in the last week. The mechanical unit maintains consistent viscosities for solvent and water based inks and coatings. There are also press conferences scheduled during the show and one of the special highlights of this times show is the “media centre” for international press briefings. We will have a detailed review of the show and its highlights in our March-April 2009 issue of PSA.
