As editor of I took a walk around the entire Chinaplas show floor this afternoon, because I had not visited a few halls yet (I didn't realize one was in a tent outside... it was quite warm and humid out there).
Here are some of my impressions, after seeing many of the smaller Asia-based exhibitors:
1) A lot of the tooling and equipment that I saw was quite impressive. I wonder, are they five or 10 years behind "state-of-the-art"? And how quickly are they catching up?
2) There were a lot of people looking at the equipment ...and lots of "sold" signs on machines.
3) I saw guys at a few booths diligently working on machines that were sitting idle. That's not unheard of at other trade shows, obviously. But it seemed like there was more than usual today.
4) Perhaps most striking, I was surprised to see machines operating without the precautions that I see at NPE and K. OK, I'm an adult and I know not to stick my hand in the working printing and thermoforming machines. (Or to walk up on a 2- or 3-story high blown film tower). Still, seeing situations like that made me stop and stare for a moment.