A natural exhibition venue for the plastics and rubber industry, with a special emphasis on plastics and rubber processing machinery, equipment, and moulds, the trade fair is ready to welcome exhibitors and visitors from all over the world.

PLAST – International Exhibition for the Plastics and Rubber Industry runs from Tuesday to Friday, 5–8 September 2023 at the Fiera Milano fairgrounds in Rho-Pero. There are more than 500 direct exhibitors already registered for the event, with over 34.000 square metres reserved, figures that support the repute of the fair as a venue for a rich selection of innovative products and services thanks to businesses and professionals from all over the world. The 2023 edition of PLAST thus proves to be a success from the onset, with the added features of the three satellite fairs, each dedicated to an area of excellence in the sector, i.e., RUBBER, 3D PLAST and PLAST-MAT, demonstrating the dynamism of a market that expresses extremely positive values.

The core of the exhibition is the section with machinery, auxiliary equipment, and plastics and rubber moulds, an important sector in Italian manufacturing with over 400 companies.

The trade Association Amaplast’s-MECS Statistical Studies Centre foresees a substantially positive balance for this sector again in 2022 – after the rebound recorded in 2021, a year ending with double-digit growth in all indicators – demonstrating the ability of the sector to absorb the impacts of the perturbations that have occurred and been compounded over the past three years.

Overall production for 2022 is expected to reach the threshold of 4.5 billion euros, with growth of one percentage point over 2021: while not in itself eye-popping, it consolidates the recovery achieved during the previous year, even exceeding by two points the pre-pandemic levels of 2019.

Growth, although tempered, is recorded in both components of demand: exports (which represent roughly 70% of production) show growth of approximately 2%, again exceeding 3 billion euros; the domestic market registers a +1%, partly influenced by a 5% increase in imports.

On the basis of the most recent period survey among Amaplast associate companies, there has been a progressive slowdown over the course of this year. This has been most marked for machinery both in the domestic and export markets while component sales and incoming jobs have maintained growth.

Italian manufacturers are looking for orders to increase at the end of the period, thanks partly to the “K effect”, with the Düsseldorf fair perhaps boosting up investments that had previously been put on hold. But businessmen are cautious, with the winds of war still blowing and economic turbulence characterizing global markets.

Turning our gaze to the coming year, it is likely that we will see a downturn in all indicators, although the reduction should be contained to a few percentage points. Indeed, CONFINDUSTRIA forecasts for the Italian economy generally also indicate low or negative growth, coupled with a continuing high inflation rate, mainly due to high energy costs.