'Largest, heaviest' NPE has two limited power outages

NPE2018 organizers kicked off this year's show using some familiar adjectives: Largest and heaviest were among some of the words used at a press breakfast opening the show May 7. But what has been called the largest plastics show in North America was also one of its dimmest.

Two separate power outages — one on May 9 and another on May 10 — briefly left several West Building exhibitors at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., in the dark, with issues ranging from blown fuses that shut down machinery to reduced in-booth lighting.

The Plastics Industry Association acknowledged the power outages in a May 17 email to Plastics News.

"During NPE2018: The Plastics Show, there were two separate power outages on Wednesday, May 9 and Thursday, May 10, which ​ resulted in 17- and seven-minute power reductions, respectively, for a concentrated area of exhibitors," spokeswoman Ashley Stoney said in a statement. "[The association] worked quickly with the Orange County Convention Center and OCCC utility staff to restore full power to exhibitors. We updated exhibitors on-site once power was quickly restored."

The outages were spread across Hall A and a small portion of Hall B in the West Building, but that spared the convention center's North/South Building.

Gwen Wilson, marketing and communications manager for the Orange Country Convention Center, also confirmed in an email that the facility "did sustain a small interruption in power" on Wednesday and Thursday during the show, which was caused by a blown fuse on a utility-owned transformer, she said.

"The loss of that fuse, one of three in the unit, resulted in a noticeable voltage drop in service that affected a limited amount of exhibitor booths," she explained. "The fuse was quickly replaced on both occasions and full service was restored to those booths within minutes. The situation has been discussed with all NPE2018 exhibitors that were affected."

The power outages bring to mind the Jan. 10 blackout at CES, the massive consumer electronics show held at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Electrical equipment damaged by heavy rainfall reportedly caused that power outage, which lasted around two hours and made headlines around the country.

On the first day of NPE2018, Bill Carteaux, president and CEO of the Plastics Industry Association, which produces NPE, said this year's event would top the exhibit space used in 2015.

"With 1.2 million square feet of exhibit space, this is the largest NPE ever," he said at the May 7 press breakfast, adding that 2,200 companies requested exhibit space. And for the first time in NPE history, the show had a waiting list of potential exhibitors.

While the association said updated attendance numbers could not be provided as of press time, organizers had said they were expecting 65,000 to attend the event. For the 2015 show, organizers were expecting 60,000 visitors.

In comparison, Chinaplas, held in Shanghai two weeks before NPE2018, nearly tripled those attendance numbers with a reported 180,701 total visitors. At more than 3.6 million square feet, the world's largest plastics trade fair also had about three times the exhibitor space of NPE2018.

Carteaux also described NPE2018 as the "heaviest" in the show's history, citing the more than 21 million pounds of freight hauled onto the show floor in preparation for the event.

The Orange County Convention Center added equipment this year for the big show, such as two high-pressure air compressors to meet demands for the Bottle Zone as well as three standby generators on-site to increase the available electric capacity for the heavy machinery at the show.

The additional equipment comes after the convention center spent $5 million for additional capacity over the last few years, Carteaux said.

2018 marks the third NPE in Orlando after moving the show from Chicago's McCormick Place, ending a streak of 14 shows in the Windy City. The last NPE in Chicago was held in June 2009.

The Plastics Industry Association, then called the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. — or SPI, as many still refer to the organization — moved the show because of complaints from exhibitors, citing high costs and strict union work rules.

In March 2015, Plastics News reported that the Orange County Convention Center had invested $4 million to upgrade the electrical system. Prior to NPE2018, based on electrical consumption, NPE2012 was considered the largest-ever trade show held in Orlando.

Exhibitors like Bolton, Ontario-based machinery maker Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd., which occupied a 12,000-square-foot space just east of Hall A's main entrance, experienced marginal impacts.

"The lights were dimmed for a brief period of time, but it didn't directly impact our displays or the conversations we had with customers," spokeswoman Allison Karavos said in an email.

Chinese injection molding machinery maker Haitian Plastics Machinery Ltd., sharing booth space with German subsidiary Zhafir Plastics Machinery GmbH, also experienced a brief loss of 120-volt power on Wednesday and Thursday at its 4,800-square-foot exhibit.

"The machines were unaffected. Everything ran nonstop," Patrice Aylward, communications consultant for Absolute Haitian Corp., the exclusive sales and service partner for Haitian, said during a phone interview. "What we lost were lights."

"It was just a small bump in the road, really, because we understand that the power draw for this show is unusually high. … If the machines had gone down, it would've been quite a different story," she added.

Coperion K-Tron's booth displays were left without power for hours in Hall A, according to John Winski, the company's director of sales.

"On Wednesday, we were down for about two hours, and on Thursday it was three-plus hours," Winski said in an email. "We lost accent lighting for our sign above the booth, and the lighting in the hall was reduced by 50 percent."

The Sewell, N.J.-based company, part of Coperion's equipment and systems division, also lost power at its 2,500-square-foot booth to its main high-definition television, virtual reality display, dense phase conveying display and its feeder/dilute phase display.

Winski said Coperion had power for low-voltage items, such as computers, lead machines and some other lighting, but anything running on three-phase power "was the problem."

Shari Lake, Coperion K-Tron's director of marketing, said she immediately went to show services during the May 9 power outage to report the incident.

"When I arrived at the OCCC counter, about four other companies were arriving at the same time and other companies had already called in their outages," Lake said in an email. "The people at the counter seemed helpful and assured us help would arrive soon. It was not so soon, as John mentioned ... but they did arrive later to get power back on."

As for an explanation, Lake said she had been told by OCCC staff that a couple of power grids had gone out. But on May 10, the second power outage, Coperion faced additional lighting problems at its booth.

"On Thursday, our big LED was affected as well as the overhead lights, which were part of our booth setup," Bettina Koenig, director of global marketing communications at German parent company Coperion GmbH, said in an email.

"We were able to start up the wall after it went dark on Thursday when the power came back. We were not able to light up the booth again on Thursday and had to work without the additional lights," she added.

The company eventually ended up calling in Production Resource Group LLC, which handled lighting setup for the Coperion booth, to troubleshoot the issues, Koenig said.

"They had to go up with a boom lift the next morning, only to find out that some breakers under the roof had to be [reset], which was under the responsibility of the convention center organization," she explained.

All lights at the booth were back on Friday morning by 7:15 a.m., she said.

"I'm not sure which halls were impacted, but it was a major disappointment considering the amount of money we pay for electrical service in the booth and the investment we make to have running displays to educate our customers on our products," Winski said.

According to rates on the NPE website, the Plastics Industry Association offered full/associate member discounts for exhibit space: $25.50 per square foot for up to 400 square feet of space and $22.25 for anything over 4,000 square feet, for example.

Service providers for the association received a discount rate of $33 per square foot. Nonmember space rates were $42 per square foot.

All exhibitors were charged $1.20 per square foot for 120-volt service, according to the website.

Bill Duff, general manager of sales and marketing at machinery maker Yizumi-HPM Corp., said the power outage on Wednesday afternoon of the show caused the company's 1,200-ton injection molding machine to blow a fuse.

"We grabbed our testing equipment … opened the cabinets and checked everything. We couldn't detect what the issue was, only that one of the safeties in the machine had tripped and it protected our machine, but something occurred to the incoming power — that's for certain," Duff said in a phone interview.

Two other machines that were running at the company's 3,200-square-foot space continued to operate normally. Duff said that despite asking convention center staff about the cause of the power issues, no explanation has been reported.

"It's concerning because it did damage the machine," Duff added. "We had to replace a breaker in the machine that it pretty much fried. Luckily, we had one with us."