The Plastics Industry Association (Plastics, Washington, D.C. / USA; www.plasticsindustry.org) has cancelled this year’s “National Plastics Exposition” (NPE; www.npe.org), the industry’s largest trade fair in the Americas, as an in-person event. Further details have not yet been provided by the organiser, who responded to a Plasteurope.com enquiry saying it would have “more to say soon”.

The triennial NPE show was scheduled to take place at the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC; www.occc.net) in Orlando, Florida, from 17 to 21 May 2021. However, “due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it has been determined that it is not possible to hold the planned event and also provide a safe environment at that time and location,” according to association president and CEO Tony Radoszewski.

Approximately 94% of the show floor for “NPE 2021” had been sold prior to the cancellation, since open registration began last year (see Plasteurope.com of 17.09.2020). At the previous show, “NPE 2018”, more than 2,100 companies from 121 countries exhibited, attracting 56,000 attendees. The association had planned to present NPE this year as a hybrid event, complementing the in-person show with a digital component called “NPE+”.

While NPE has decided to cancel all in-person events this year, “Chinaplas 2021” will be taking place, as planned, in Shenzhen, Guangdong / China from 13 to 16 April (see Plasteurope.com of 22.12.2020), and “Plast 2021” from 22 to 25 June in Milan / Italy (see Plasteurope.com of 04.01.2021) – both are scheduled to be in-person attendance events.

For more details on this year's trade fairs and conferences, please see PIE's extensive
More on PIEWeb.com: event list.

Plastics Industry Association recently announced the selection of ten industry leaders as the 2021 inductee class to the “Plastics Hall of Fame”. These include Peter Neumann, previously the CEO at injection molding machinery manufacturer Engel (Schwertberg / Austria; www.engelglobal.com) when the company developed tie-bar-less and two-platen machines, Donald Paulson, a veteran plastics processing educator who was one of the first to use cavity pressure to control injection machinery pressure and founded Paulson Training Programs (Chester, Connecticut / USA; www.paulsontraining.com), and Ulrich Reifenhäuser, who is the chief sales officer at German extrusion machinery group Reifenhäuser (Troisdorf; www.reifenhauser.com), and has been the chairman of the “K” show since 2004.