NPE 2012 Can Avoid a Repeat of The Last Show in 2009

The Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. believes that NPE 2012 can avoid a repeat of the last show in 2009, when several big Japanese machinery firms threatened to pull out of the event during the worst of the global financial crisis, my colleague Steve Toloken reported from Tokyo. Here is what he wrote: Those companies ultimately stayed in NPE, after Washington-based SPI cut the fees that companies pay to exhibit. SPI President Bill Carteaux and Gene Sanders, senior vice president of trade shows and conferences, hosted about 90 Japanese plastics industry officials at a reception in Tokyo during the International Plastic Fair in late October, to thank them and make a pitch for their continued participation in NPE. Carteaux told Plastics News that "at the current time, all of the [Japanese] majors are in, no one [is] on the fence." "Our Japanese participation is great," he said. "We have all the majors that were there in 2009 plus some additional. We are thrilled with the support from them." "That said, we continue to work the market and believe we will continue to build the Japanese presence with some new comers," he said. Carteaux also told the Japanese crowd that he believed the new location for NPE, in Orlando, will attract more participants from Central and South America, a market he said is "extremely important" to the Japanese. One-third of NPE attendees come from outside the United States, he said. Toloken also sent me a copy of the script of Carteaux's speech at the reception. I noticed a few graphs that I thought worth sharing with some sentences highlighted: Contrary to everything you may read in the press, the United States plastics market continues to do well. We continue to see growth in many markets...unless of course you are in housing. Trust me, I don't believe everything the press says about Japan; please don't believe everything you read about the US. 1. Overall US plastic shipments were up to $341 billion in 2010. We are now the 2nd largest manufacturing sector in the country. 2. A favorable exchange rate, and reduced rates for natural gas due to all of the new shale deposits that have been found bode very well for our exports. For the first half of the year exports were up 11% over 2010, which was a very strong year. We had a trade surplus as an industry of over $17 billion last year. China continues to be our third largest export market behind Canada and Mexico. 3. Plastic product production is back up to almost 90% of 2007 levels, before the recession. Our broad base of manufacturers is still very bullish on the future. Overall, there is a resurgence of manufacturing in the United States for a whole host of reasons, not the least are rising global energy costs and labor in China. ... Reshoring of products is happening at an increasing rate and major companies are making announcements that they are either building new plants or bringing assembly lines back to the States. Source:plasticsnews.com