We've started a new feature at Plastics News, a podcast, and our latest installment looks at the industry's most international trade fair, the just completed K show in Germany.
This was my 4th K Fair, and as both one of our podcasters and the newspaper's international editor, I wanted to take advantage of the eight days I spent there to give a little (audio) flavor of K.
If you're in the industry, the eight exhausting and energizing days of the fair make it the world's preeminent show.
It's nearly twice the size of the biggest North American plastics show, NPE. K claims attendance of 230,000 — it may or may not have the most attendees because every fair does headcount differently — but K has its share of crowds and super expensive hotels.
It's about the same size of the fast-developing Chinese show, Chinaplas, but K is much more of a global technology showcase, at least for now. I say that having been to several editions of NPE, Chinaplas and K (and others including the big Japanese and Indian shows.)
So if you're inclined, please take a listen.
In the podcast, we meet up with some young designers at their first K to hear from them about how seeing all the materials and technologies shape their opinions about the environmental questions around plastics.
We catch up with German companies using the fair for a recruitment drive, and we sit down with the retiring CEO of Engel Group, Peter Neumann, to listen to him talk globalization, robots and his sense of the industry's future.
Hope you enjoy.