The leading Italian plastics event, “Plast” (www.plastonline.org), is going back to the future. After announcing during last year’s fair that the next edition of the traditionally triannual event would be brought forward to 2017 to avoid clashes with other leading exhibitions (see Plasteurope.com of 11.05.2015), organiser Promaplast (Milan / Italy; www.promaplast.org) has now changed the date to 29 May to 1 June 2018. The reason for the renewed rescheduling is the co-location of Plast with four other international exhibitions, in what the organiser called “The Innovation Alliance.”

One of the main drivers for the date change has been the switch in ownership of the “IPACK-IMA” processing and packaging fair (www.ipack-ima.com/eng/home), which was held together with Plast in 2006 and 2009. Joining the two events in 2018 will be “Meat-Tech” (www.meat-tech.it/eng/home), “Print4All” and “Intralogistica Italia” (http://intralogistica-italia.com/en), all combined at the Milan fairgrounds for four days.

Alessandro Grassi, president of Promaplast and of Italian industry association Assocomaplast (Milan; www.assocomaplast.org), said one of the main reasons for the earlier decision to hold the fair in 2017 was to avoid an overlap with the “NPE” (www.npe.org), held in Orlando, Florida / USA from 7-11 May 2018. The new Plast dates not only prevent such an overlap, but also provide the event with a lot of synergies with its co-exhibitions, resulting in what Promaplast called “a unique trade fair.”