At the plastics trade fair “interplastica 2018” (www.interplastica.de) and the parallel packaging trade fair “upakovka” (www.upakovka-tradefair.com), roughly 900 companies from 30 countries presented themselves from 23 to 26 January 2018. Some 24,900 professionals from Russia and neighbouring countries attended the trade shows. That is a net plus over the 800 exhibitors and 23,000 visitors that had been registered in 2017, according to fair organiser Messe Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf / Germany; www.messe-duesseldorf.de).

“To the extent that the Russian economy is developing positively and reliably, Russian companies are taking advantage of the two leading industry showcases,” says Werner Dornscheidt, chairman of Messe Düsseldorf. The upturn in key customer industries would lead to a high level of demand for plastics and rubber products and packaging. The improved exchange rate of the rouble would contribute to a wave of production modernisations that Russian companies had had to postpone over the past few years of crisis.

After a subdued several years in which global exports of plastics and rubber machinery to Russia had been declining, a turning point was reached in 2017. The two important machinery manufacturing countries, Germany and Italy, have now reported a hefty increase, based on preliminary figures.

German deliveries from January to November 2017 amounted to EUR 104.1m, an increase of 43.5% against the same period of the previous year, reports the German plastics and rubber machinery association VDMA Kunststoff- und Gummimaschinen (KuG; Frankfurt; http://kug.vdma.org). Italian manufacturers have supplied goods worth EUR 73m in the first nine months of 2017, an increase of 109% compared to the same period in 2016, reports the Italian plastics and rubber machinery association Amaplast (AMP; Milan; www.amaplast.org).

During the Russian recession in 2016, the German market share was at 26.3%, followed by China with 24.4% and Italy with 12.0%. “We expect the Russian economy to continue its recovery and to stimulate investments in the packaging industry, since demand for high-quality packaged goods is growing. An increasing number of positive signs are coming from the automotive sector and the construction industry too. Machines ‘made in Germany’ will benefit from this and will strengthen their position as market leaders in Russia,” says KuG managing director Thorsten Kühmann. However, the level of activity is still low. “For the time being – in the short term – it cannot be expected that the heights reached by German exports of plastics and rubber machinery in the exceptionally good years of 2012 and 2013 will be repeated.”

The association also identified three future expansion areas at the exhibition. These are Industry 4.0, recycling and the new trend whereby tool and mould manufacturers are increasingly teaming up with machinery manufacturers to present themselves as integrated system suppliers.