With a focus on the up-and-coming West African region for the plastics industry, Accra / Ghana, is the site for the first international trade show on plastics, composites, chemistry as well as printing & packaging solutions and material 3-5 December. Plastprintpack (www.ppp-westafrica.com) is organised by the German event agency fairtrade (Heidelberg; www.fairtrade-messe.de). The event is being held in conjunction with agrofood West Africa and food + beverage tec West Africa.

As one of the most stable countries in the region, Ghana experienced a 5% jump in its GDP for 2012 and experts expect it to go as high as 7% in the next couple of years, making it the obvious selection to host the inaugural event, according to the organisers in Heidelberg.

According to Germany's national engineering association, VDMA (Frankfurt; www.vdma.org), West African imports of food processing and packaging machinery and equipment increased to EUR 567m in 2011 compared to EUR 341m in 2010, or a gain of 66%. With EUR 507m, imports of machinery remained relatively stable on a high level in 2012.

Both Austria and Germany are lending strong support to the kick-off event and are expected to have strong showings from each country's respective industries.

e-Service:
Plastprintpack conference agenda as PDF