MUMBAI -- PlastIndia, the country's largest plastics trade show, will move its next edition in 2015 to an exhibition hall under construction in the western Indian state of Gujarat, in what organizers say will be an upgrade from outdated show grounds it had been using in New Delhi.
The show, to be held Feb. 5-10, 2015, will now take place at exhibition grounds near the Mahatma Mandir Convention Center in Ahmedabad, and will be better able to accommodate PlastIndia's growth, said Bipin Shah, president of the Mumbai-based PlastIndia Foundation, which organizes the event.
“It's going to be an absolutely new international arena,” said Shah, in an interview with Plastics News.
The PlastIndia show has grown from 700,000 square feet of exhibition area in 2006 to 1.07 million square feet with its last edition, in 2012.
Show officials said that made it the third-largest plastics show in the world, measured by exhibitor space, surpassing the NPE 2012 show in Florida, which covered 920,000 square feet.
Shah and other show officials had made no secret of their problems with the sprawling, 30-year-old Pragati Maidan complex in New Delhi, including not having enough electric power to handle the demands of the machinery exhibited and not being sufficiently modernized.
But the move to new grounds for India's national show will have challenges. Shah said construction on the new fairgrounds is just beginning but that it will be completed within one year and will have more than 910,000 square feet of exhibition space for the 2015 show.
He said that event could have demand for nearly 1.2 million square feet of exhibition space, and said organizers will use temporary hangers to handle additional demand.
He said the government of Gujarat state has been very supportive, and has promised significant support with infrastructure and transportation.
The state is a sizable center of plastics manufacturing in India. It's also where the PlastIndia group is building a new $30 million university campus to provide plastics industry technical and managerial education, with curriculum development assistance from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and the University of Wisconsin.