Plastics News and our colleagues from European Plastics News and PRW are doing show dailies at Fakuma 2014 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The show runs from Oct. 14-18.
This is only my second Fakuma, but Bill Bregar, our senior reporter who covers machinery, has been here more times than he can count. And David Vink, who is part of our reporting team, has been to every Fakuma since 1990.
So we're more than covered on the experience front.
If you haven't been here before, the region is lovely. Friedrichshafen is right on Lake Constance, near the borders with Switzerland and Austria. If you like apples, this is your place, there are orchards everywhere. And you'll see blimps just about every day, since the Messe is right across the street from the Zeppelin company.
Here are some facts and figures about the show:
Promoter: P.E. Schall GmbH & Co. KG, a family-owned company based in Frickenhausen, Germany.
Primary topics: Injection molding machinery, thermoforming, extrusion, tooling, materials and components.
Exhibition floor space: Roughly 915,000 square feet.
Exhibitors: 1,772 from 36 countries.
The largest number of exhibitors are from Germany (1,139), Italy (116), Switzerland (113), Austria (63), China (50) and France (48). From North America there are 14 from the United States and one from Canada.
