Chinaplas back in action!

We talk to Ada Leung, General Manager of Adsale Exhibition Services Ltd, about this year's CHINAPLAS, exhibitors and participants, and the portfolio of products and technologies presented in Shenzhen.

This year's edition of CHINAPLAS recently came to an end. Until a few months ago, China remained closed due to the pandemic situation, but you decided to organize this exhibition. What are your first impressions after that?

Amazing. I think everything is very amazing. As you know in China, the pandemic was being put under control within a very short period of time. Daily lives and businesses resumed normal very quickly. At that time, in our contact with our exhibitors and visitors, we could feel that most of the participants were long for the physical show of CHINAPLAS. Despite the fact that, in recent years, the trend of digitalization becomes more and more popular, we can see that it cannot replace the face-to-face meetings and contacts between people. Everyone is looking forward to the show and now we are very happy that CHINAPLAS was successfully held in Shenzhen last month. We heard a lot of good responses and feedback from the participants. Now we are still very happy and very excited from the show. We are very glad that CHINAPLAS has provided a platform for international trade and technical exchange to resume for the industry.

Then let's move on to the numbers. How many exhibitors presented their products and, the most important thing, how many trade visitors were there?

This year we had 3,905 exhibitors from 40 countries and regions. For the visitors, it’s a new record for CHINAPLAS this year. We had almost 250,000 international visitors which is over 52 % increase of CHINAPLAS 2019 in Guangzhou, about 63% increase of the last Shenzhen CHINAPLAS in 2021. To us, it’s a new record in CHINAPLAS history.

There were obviously global brands at CHINAPLAS, but I also saw many smaller companies from Europe. This time I did not see companies from Poland, but maybe in the future... Can we say that the CHINAPLAS fair has an international scale again?

Yes, indeed. CHINAPLAS is the international exhibition in plastics and rubber industries for the global industries. The international level is very high, just now I have mentioned that we had 3,905 exhibitors from 40 countries and regions. In fact, among them, there were 9 country / region pavilions, they were organized by Austria, France, German, Italy, Switzerland, United States, United Kingdom, as well as Japan and Taiwan region.

Whereas on the visitor side, we had about 30,000 visitors from overseas. Although it has not yet back to the past level of overseas visitors, it has already superseded 50% of the past. We also had 40 overseas buyer delegations organized by the industry associations and end-user associations from the countries of Malaysia, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Russia, South Korea, Thailand and Turkey. You can say that the international level was very high in this year CHINAPLAS.

Which sectors of the plastics industry were most represented at CHINAPLAS?

At CHINAPLAS, you can find all kinds of technologies from the whole supply chain of the industry, meaning that ranging from raw materials, machineries, semi-finished and finished products. Out of our 3,900 exhibitors, 65% are the machine makers, over 30% are the raw material suppliers. This year, for the first time, we set the Innovative Products Zone where over 120 semi-finished and finished products exhibitors displayed their products at the show. So you can see this is roughly the proportion of the plastic technology suppliers, as well as the other suppliers participated at the show.

At the fair, you will see all kinds of machineries, like injection, extrusion, blow molding or smart manufacturing. Whereas for the materials, all sorts of materials ranging from general plastics, engineering plastics, bioplastics, recycled plastics, even thermoplastic elastomers, composites & high performance materials. While for the products, you can find different kinds of high performance products, the functional films or the eco-friendly products. This year, we had over 200 technologies made their first debut, world or Asia debut at the show.

The number of companies and the range of solutions presented at the fair was really impressive. How do you assess the China plastics industry nowadays?

The trade fairs speak for the industry. They are representing the industry. From trade fair, one can know the latest development, the market needs, the future trends of the industry. As far as the China plastics industry is concerned, I think from this year’s show, for example the visitor attendance, in the first two days of CHINAPLAS, the number of visitors has already superseded the number of the entire fair of our last event in Shenzhen in 2021. The total no. of visitors is almost 250,000. From the visitor attendance, you can see the vitality of the market, or even the huge demand from the market, whereas just now I introduced the exhibits, at the fair, you can see all kinds of technologies, and these technologies are actually applying to many different application industries, like automotive, electronic, medical, packaging, or even aviation and railway etc. From here you can see the market itself and the demand from the market.

In China, we always need to understand the policies from the Chinese government. The Chinese government is continuing to promote about high quality development, the upgrade at the transformation of the manufacturing industries. These will drive further demand for smart solutions and the advanced technologies. Whereas there’s also dual carbon policies being put forward by the Chinese government, in future, eco-friendly, green and low carbon solutions are the concerns of the market, and the demand will also be high. You should know very well about the greater bay development strategy from the country to develop the greater bay area into a high-end innovation research centre. All these tell you that internally, within the China market, the future development will be very good, and it’s towards good demand for the high-end technologies. Externally, since this year is the 2nd year of the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), in future, the trading relationship between China and the RCEP member countries will continue to grow with the lowering in the trade tariff. All these factors will give us a lot of confidence to the China market, as well as the China plastics industry.

I would like to thank you for organizing this impressive event. Hopefully, the pandemic will not return and the political situation in the world will calm down. What are your plans for next year's CHINAPLAS?

Next year CHINAPLAS will return to Shanghai in Apr 23-26. I think both exhibitors and visitors will have big expectation on the event, because it will be after 6 years since 2018 that we are returning to Shanghai. At this year CHINAPLAS, we have already received very good response, a lot of space booking on CHINAPLAS 2024 received from our exhibitors. We already started to feel excited about the event which will come in one year’s time.

Thank you and see you at CHINAPLAS 2024!