New Records Set at NPE 1997

BY LARRY ADAMS

The NPE 1997 show was big. An understatement has never been bigger. At the 50th anniversary of the NPE 1997, June 16-20, there were record numbers of attendees looking at a record number of exhibits and exploring a record amount of exhibit space.

"It was a big, big, big show," said first-time attendee Jacques Cayo, general manager of Jaro Industries, a Quebec, Can.-based manufacturer of telephone booths.

How Big Was It?
The triennial event, which opened with bagpipes and a ribbon cutting ceremony with a scissors-wielding Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and NPE 1997 Chairman David Hahn, drew more than 82,634 people, an all-time high, over the five-day run. Nearly 80 percent of the attendees represented 10 end-use markets with the biggest markets being custom plastic processors, automotive/transportation and chemicals/plastics. The previous attendance record of 69,000 was set in 1994 during the last NPE. (The first year of the show, in post-World War II 1946, there were 87,000 attendees, but that figure reflected attendance by the general public. The next year the NPE became an "industry only" show and attendance dropped to 13,000.)

Those 82,000 people toured more than 1 million square feet of exhibit space showcasing products and services from an unprecedented 1,726 companies exhibiting in the mammoth exhibit halls of Chicago's McCormick Place, off of Chicago's lakefront. According to show organizers, more than 24 million tons of products were trucked into the show. The amount of electricity consumed to light these booths and power the injection molders, thermoformers, robotic routers and all the rest of the high-tech plastic machining equipment would light a city of 60,000 people for a year.

"I thought the show was great," said Michael Turek, operations manager for Fenner Drives, a Pennsylvania-based manufacturer of industrial belting and power transmission components. "I liked the fact that everyone in plastics was there."

The final show figures, "reinforce the fact that NPE is a world marketplace for the introduction and display of new technology and equipment for the global plastic industry," said Hahn. Approximately 1,000 new plastics-related products and services were exhibited.

"NPE came through on its promise to deliver the largest and most successful show in its 51-year history. Compared to the first NPE that was held in 1946, NPE 1997 boasted more than 40 times the exhibit space and more than 10 times the number of exhibitors," Hahn added.

In a survey of NPE attendees conducted by show organizers, the most popular exhibits were those that featured machinery and related equipment, plastic materials, tooling, dies and molds, factory automation/robotics, components, instrumentation and process controls, CAD/CAM/CAE/CIM systems and design services.

By general consensus, the most popular booths appeared to be those that were giving away free goods. The biggest prize was a car given away by HPM, manufacturers of injection molders and other plastic processing equipment. Other exhibitors gave away plastic children's chairs, large patio chairs, buckets, drinking tumblers and other products fabricated at their booths.

Seminars were also very popular at the show. Twenty educational sessions were conducted featuring 170 speakers discussing the latest trends and developments in the plastic industry. The average conference program attendance was approximately 225 people per session, outpacing conference attendance at NPE 1994. The total estimated seminar attendance topped 4,500.

"The show was a winner for everyone involved," said Larry Thomas, president of the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc., sponsors of NPE. "Attendees saw more new products and services than at any other NPE in history, exhibiting companies marketed their products to more attendees than every before, and Chicago received an estimated $120 million from the nearly 83,000 people who visited the exposition."

Glen Sisk contributed to this report.

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