Canadian firms report on opportunities from Plastimagen, Chinaplas

With the dust having settled on two of the bigger international plastics tradeshows, Canadian exhibitors and attendees have returned home with some insights about foreign markets. Here’s a partial post-mortum.

First up was the four-day Plastimagen México 2010 trade show, held from March 23-26 in Mexico City. The event attracted more than 28,000 visitors and generated deals worth about $120 million, most involving machinery, materials and components for sectors including automotive, pharmaceutical, food and drink, petrochemicals, agriculture, the environment and electronics.   

“The Canadian presence at the Plastimagen was very strong, which is important,” Harb Bhangu, vice president of manufacturing at Toronto’s Compact Mould Ltd., told Canadian Plastics. “Canadian shops and manufacturers who want to make connections in Mexico need to show up at events like this to demonstrate their interest and commitment.”   

One of the top low-cost manufacturing sources in the world – ahead of both China and India – Mexico has a booming plastics industry, with an estimated 650 injection molding machines purchased in 2009, which is three times the number sold in Canada. Unsurprisingly, Canadian attendees came back with little doubt that Mexico holds real promise for partnerships and profits. “I was struck by the enthusiasm of the Mexican processors to collaborate with Canadian organizations, which is excellent news for our industry,” said Pierre Fillion, president and CEO of the Quebec-based Federation of Plastics and Alliances Composites (FEPAC). “Mexican firms have money to invest in partnerships, and can give Canadians access to markets in the southern U.S. and Latin America. The only hiccup is that we have to be careful to pre-qualify the companies that we’re going to be dealing with.”

One month later and half a world away, Canadian exhibitors and attendees descended on Shanghai for Chinaplas 2010. Running from April 19-22, attendance at the event reached 81,435 – a 17.5 per cent jump from last year’s total, despite volcano-related travel disruptions that held down attendance from Europe. Measured by attendance, Chinaplas now appears to be the second-biggest global plastics trade show, surpassing North America’s NPE. Germany’s K Show still holds the top spot.

To the surprise of no one, the show had a green theme, with the spotlight on technologies and production processes geared toward environmental protection, energy conservation, resources saving, and after-use recycling. Packaging might have been the industry segment of choice among attendees, and Canadian-based companies reported a healthy number of packaging-related enquiries. “The Chinaplas 2010 show had a great turnout with some of the highest levels of attendance we’ve ever seen, and our HyPET preform molding system and HyCAP 300 system for beverage closure manufacturing generated a lot of attention,” said Gerardo Chiaia, president of Husky Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa.