The numbers are in for the latest international plastics trade show, Fakuma 2024, which was held Oct. 15-19 in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
According to P.E. Schall GmbH & Co. KG, the event’s organizer, the 29th Fakuma fair attracted 36,675 visitors. That’s down 7 percent from the 39,343 visitors in 2023, but 24 percent down from the show’s peak in 2017.
Considering the well-documented problems in the injection molding machinery sector, especially in Europe, I’d say those are respectable numbers. Fakuma is a huge show for injection molders, and the consensus among most of the machinery suppliers is that they don’t expect the market to recover from the post-pandemic slump until late 2025.
The decline in Fakuma vistors is also pretty similar to what the Plastics Industry Association reported earlier this year for NPE2024.
Keep in mind that trade show organizers count and report attendance figures differently, so this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. But more than 51,000 people registered to attend NPE, which was held May 6-10 in Orlando, Fla., and that was a drop of about 9 percent from the last show, which was in 2018.
Again, with the “you really can’t compare shows” caveat, one event that’s been bucking the trend is Chinaplas. Adsale Exhibition Services Ltd. reported Chinaplas 2024 attendance of 321,879, which was up about 29 percent from the 2023 show in Shenzhen.
The next Fakuma is scheduled for Oct. 13-17, 2026, in Friedrichshafen.