The upcoming 21st "interplastica" (www.interplastica.de) trade fair will take place in Moscow / Russia from 23-26 January 2018. Co-organisers Messe Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf / Germany; www.messe-duesseldorf.com) and its subsidiary Messe Düsseldorf Moscow OOO (Moscow; www.messe-duesseldorf.ru) expect around 600 companies to participate, with "strong" participation from Germany, Italy, Austria and Turkey. Closing date for registration is 4 October 2017. The last interplastica in Moscow had around 23,000 attendees (see Plasteurope.com of 22.02.2017).

In addition to the "Polymer Plaza", focused on lightweight and composite products, interplastica will also include the second edition of "3D fab+print Russia", a special show for additive manufacturing. Concurrently to interplastica 2018 will be the "upakovka" processing and packaging trade fair (www.upakovka-tradefair.com).

According to Germany Trade and Invest (gtai, Berlin; www.gtai.de), the Russian economy grew in 2017 and GDP is expected to increase by 0.5-2%. Selected sectors that are being supported by the government include machinery and automotive construction, aerospace, electronics, IT and telecommunications, chemicals and mining. Petrochemicals plants are being built to produce intermediate and end products, and improve domestic raw materials supply to Russia's own chemicals industry, with plastics manufacturing and processing benefiting from this.