The “28th International Exhibition on Plastics and Rubber Industries” – more commonly referred to as “Chinaplas” (www.chinaplasonline.com) – opens its doors in Shanghai today. Asia’s leading plastics event has drawn more than 3,000 exhibitors, with organiser Adsale Exhibition Services (Hong Kong / China; www.adsale.com.hk) saying this year’s edition approaches 230,000 m² in size, literally filling up every inch at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre.

In fact, speaking to media in the run-up to the event, Adsale chairman Stanley Chu said that in order to allow for 400 new exhibitors to join the event, all companies displaying their goods and services this year had to make a 17% cut in their original space plans. With all halls fully booked, Adsale even made available the ground outside, where new exhibition spaces were created. In total, some 13 booths will be located on the “outside”, including a new “VIP elite club lunch” put together to allow about 300 leading industrial buyers some time and space to enjoy a good meal and converse with potential partners. This year’s VIP club lunch is sponsored by Austrian injection moulding machinery maker Engel (Schwertberg; www.engelglobal.com), which has just introduced an entirely new brand catering exclusively to the Asian commodity market – for details, see Plasteurope.com of 15.04.2014.

Altogether, Adsale expects Chinaplas 2014 to attract about 120,000 visitors, with international attendees anticipated to reach 30,000, hailing from about 130 different countries. Chu said that in terms of attendance, foreign visitors usually stay for at least three of the four fair days, while their Chinese counterparts usually limit their visit to one or two days.

The key foci at this 28th edition of Chinaplas will be on what Chu called “Greenovation”, or on plastics and sustainability, as well as on energy savings, in the machinery field in particular. These themes are also reflected in the events organised throughout the show, including the “City of Tomorrow” exhibit. Sponsored by Bayer (Leverkusen / Germany; www.bayer.com), the installation depicts a sustainable model of urban living, including green raw materials, energy-efficient machinery, green solutions for products as well as recycling.

Another concurrent event will be the “Green Conference”, which Plasteurope.com co-organised, and which will address not only innovative solutions for plastics recycling but also the financial benefits of green moulding.

Indeed, the themes are not that different from last year’s fair, which spotlighted green construction. This year, however, the main focus is on sustainable development, with a particular view towards energy savings. The fact that the latter has become so important in China is not by accident. Chu explained that the Chinese government has been pushing towards more energy-efficient machinery for some time already. This emphasis has seen many low-end manufacturing enterprises fall by the wayside, as China attempts to reinvigorate its economy, which has been slowing down.

With the economies of the country’s former export markets – including the US, Europe and Japan – also not performing to their best, demand for Chinese products is slowing. Two years ago in fact, Chu said, China began importing more than it exports. And there is no going back to the “good old days”, which the Adsale chairman said were built on both low-cost labour and low-cost land – both factors that came at the expense of the environment and necessitated heavy energy consumption.

Riding the global green wave, this year’s fair is thus once again set under the star of sustainability and green manufacturing. Both foreign and local visitors should also keep an eye out for a rise in displays of fully automated production systems. That is because one of the ways in which China is trying to close its export deficit is by switching to entirely automated processing systems, which would give it back the competitive edge it lost when local workers started demanding more pay.

In short, aside from new product launches, networking and the usual fair buzz, visitors this year will get to witness the latest stage in the Chinese economic miracle, which could not be better embodied than by the country’s plastics sector.