As managing editor of GE Plastics skipped exhibiting at NPE 2006, but it looks like the company will be back again next year.
Sabic Innovative Plastics, the company that bought GE Plastics last year, will be exhbiting at NPE 2009, according to this nugget posted today by Bob Martino on the NPE blog:
A grand old name has returned to NPE in a new guise. Sabic Innovative Plastics, the new identity of GE Plastics, has taken a 12,000 sq.ft. booth in the new McCormick West hall. In May of 2007, General Electric Company sold the plastics business to Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC). GE was one of the original exhibitors at the first NPE in 1946 and was missing from NPE for the first time in 2006. But with Sabic the company’s globally supplied range of engineering thermoplastics will be back in the show.
For your background and reading pleasure, here's a story I wrote in October 2006 explaining how GE Plastics was working to reach customers as an alternative to NPE.
It will be interesting to see if more resin companies decide to come back to big plastics trade shows like NPE -- if not next year, then in 2012. Some of the resin companies that have skipped NPE in recent years still have big exhibits at the K fair in Germany and Chinaplas. If there's value in exhibiting at those shows, why not in North America?