The 11th instalment of India’s plastics trade fair “Plastindia” will move back to the capital, New Delhi, in February 2021. K. K. Seksaria, president of organiser Plastindia Foundation (Mumbai, Maharashtra / India; www.plastindia.org), made the announcement on the last day of this year’s event.

Gandhinagar, located a couple of kilometres north of Ahmedabad in the state of Gujarat, will be abandoned after only two of the triennial fairs have been organised there. The politically motivated decision to use these fair grounds had always been highly controversial and has finally been rescinded, following the insight that the location is just too remote – for more information, see Plasteurope.com of 21.10.2014. Co-organiser Messe Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf / Germany; www.messe-duesseldorf.com) and others also commented that the surrounding infrastructure was quite lacking for such a large event.

However, there is still some uncertainty. Reportedly, the “Pragati Maidan” exhibition centre in New Delhi is currently being rebuilt and modernised. The Plastindia Foundation, however, is expecting a timely completion.

Around 1,800 exhibitors – 550 of them from abroad – have received around 246,000 visitors from 44 countries during the six-day event held in February 2018 in Gandhinagar. This is a record high and significant increase over the 150,000 visitors in 2015.

India, where plastics consumption is estimated to reach 20m t in 2020, is just as eager as many other countries to promote recycling. According to the Plastindia Foundation, waste amounts to 62m t/y, of which 5.6m t/y are said to be plastics. However, India’s main approach to elimination are “waste to fuel” technologies.