Volcano keeps Europeans away, but Chinaplas opens on high note

The thousands of European plastics processors, and employees from exhibiting suppliers, who usually attend Asia's largest plastics tradeshow almost certainly won't arrive before the show is over, but Chinaplas officials say they still expect record attendance at the show this week. The show opened on Monday, April 19 and runs through this Thursday.

Stanley Chu, chairman of Chinaplas organizer Adsale, commented during the show's opening ceremony today that while this latest edition of the show was even at that early point proving a success, with record first day attendance expected and delegations from as far afield as Brazil highlighting the shows increasingly international credentials, his one regret was the lack of flights from Europe affecting European exhibitor attendance.

A walk through the aisles did show some empty stands that were rented by European companies, although Chu hastened to add that most major European companies did have local offices in China and their companies were well represented at Chinaplas by capable local staff. "Many companies have their China offices in Shanghai so they can still have a big presence," said Chu.

Booth visits by MPW at the show seemed to back up Chu's feelings. While the staff on hand at European companies might have been more stretched than they would have liked to have been, and rescheduling of appointments was the name of the game, exhibitors seemed to be taking the sudden changes in stride. "We know we are in for a busy four days," said one local manager at a European engineering plastics supplier. "But we're doing our best to leverage our local resources and ensure we get to talk all out existing and potential customers."

The volcano eruption in Iceland and subsequent spewing of ashes into European airspace has effectively shut the continent's air travel. Calls by MPW on Monday in Europe (made by my colleague Matt Defosse, grounded there and unable to attend Chinaplas as planned) made clear that most, maybe all of the people who had planned to travel to the show from Europe's machinery and materials' suppliers were unable to do so. Officials at Germany's plastics and rubber machinery trade group within the VDMA, the German Engineering Federation (Frankfurt), say they have had to cancel their attendance. Euromap president Bernhard Merki, also CEO at injection molding machine manufacturer Netstal, couldn't make the trip as he had planned, and nor could Ulrich Reifenhäuser, managing partner at the extrusion manufacturer of the same name and also chairman of the exhibitors' committee for the largest plastics tradeshow, K 2010.

As this article was written, air safety officials in Europe are beginning to relax some of the flight prohibitions that have been in place since last Friday, but officials expect it may take 10-14 days before flight patterns return to normal.  Many of the first flights will be reserved for the 1000s of people either stranded in Europe and as yet unable to return to home overseas, or to bring Europeans stranded outside the continent back to their homes. —Stephen Moore