Keeping the NPE 2015 momentum moving forward

WASHINGTON — By most accounts, NPE 2015 was a blockbuster.

The show — and the plastics industry — are back after some tough economic years, and show organizer, the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc., has released numbers backing up that claim. But now that the parties are over, the booths are broken down and it's back to business as usual for three years, how can plastics keep that NPE 2015 enthusiasm going? The industry's top associations hope to do so with a little more togetherness.

Final registration figures for NPE 2015 hit 65,810, up 19 percent from three years ago, according to Washington-based SPI. Some 26 percent of the registrants came from outside the United States, representing 130 countries, with nearly 5,000 from Latin America, SPI said.

SPI counts registrants rather than actual attendees at Orlando, Fla.'s, Orange County Convention Center March 23-17, making comparisons to previous shows difficult. The 2000 NPE show in Chicago holds the record for the most registrations — about 90,000. While observers don't believe that was an accurate measure of actual attendance, the trade show's 2000 iteration is remembered as one of the most successful NPEs on record. Through the 2015 show's run, NPE veterans proclaimed it unofficially on par with the 2000 show.

NPE 2015 did officially top the 2000 show with records for exhibit space and number of exhibitors. According to SPI, the OCCC had 2,029 exhibitors with more than 1.128 million net square feet of exhibit space — exceeding the previous records of 2,009 exhibitors and 1.041 million net square feet set in 2000 at Chicago's McCormick Place.

NPE2018 will be held May 7-11, 2018, at the OCCC in Orlando.

In the meantime, industry leaders are working behind the scenes to keep the NPE momentum going, pulling the plastics industry together to keep growing and improving plastics' public image.

It's a challenge because the plastics industry is not monolithic — as those in the business already know, points out Steve Russell, the American Chemistry Council's vice president of plastics.

“NPE is an amazing event once every three years, and it does give a chance for us to come together. But the purpose of NPE is not to strategize about the future. The purpose of NPE is the business of the plastics industry and to make the wheels work,” Russell said. “What's happening at the same time and every day in Washington and in the association headquarters is that we are, on a daily basis, working to advance our members interests in advocacy.”

After years of working separately and sometimes butting heads, association leaders have found common ground in recent years, working together in “associations of associations” such as the North American Plastics Alliance (NAPA), the North American Plastics Recycling Association (NAPRA) and the growing Plastics Association Leaders (PAL) group.

“There was no doubt countless dollars were being wasted in what I call cannibalizing each other's projects,” said Jay Gardiner, president of Gardiner Plastics Inc., president of the Plastics Academy and one of the driving forces behind PAL. “If Association One is going to look at an issue and spend money on it and Association Two is going to look at [the same issue] and spend money on it, there is a synergy in the two associations working together.”

PAL has grown to about 20 organizations from across the plastics business, Gardiner said, “from large ones to small ones,” fostering such synergy. In addition to sharing ideas and pooling resources on advocacy, workforce development and sustainability, at NPE, Gardiner said he worked up a “matrix of issues” for PAL, gathering a list of issues that reach across different sectors of the plastics industry — from bag bans to green building standards to programs for young engineers — and cross-referencing completed studies, ad campaigns and any work that's already been done by any plastics group.

“Our industry may be the third largest component of the manufacturing sector on the GDP, however to find our industry, you have to pull together a lot of points,” Gardiner said. “But if you know who has been working on what … you become part of the much bigger picture. It will unite everybody so that you can get the best bang for the buck.”

SPI President and CEO Bill Carteaux said getting that bang for the association buck is a big consideration for all the plastics associations, particularly when a message is meant for those outside the industry.

“Associations, that's typical, we do all this work but we don't have the budget to tell people about it. And that's what we're trying to overcome,” Carteaux said in an interview in Orlando. “[Plastics is] very, very diverse, from still-family-owned businesses to hundred billion dollar corporations. And we touch every part of human life. And I think it's hard for people to rally around that. But we need to. We are moving the needle; we could move it faster with the general public.”

Sharing ideas, making deals and celebrating the industry as a whole every three years at NPE is an important part of that, Carteaux said, and so is carrying a more monolithic shared vision for the industry beyond the triennial trade show.

“The recognition that has happened recently is that each of us, no matter where we are in the plastics industry, whether it's an additive supplier or a machine maker or a processor or a resin supplier, we are all impacted when the public is presented with misinformation about plastic because that can lead to loss of confidence, materials specifiers specifying other materials, consumers rejecting or just deciding not to use a particular plastic,” Russell said.