NPE 2003: A passion for packaging

NPE 2003 is set for June 23-27, 2003, at McCormick Place in Chicago. According to the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI), sponsor of the triennial show, packaging professionals will discover new technologies, design innovations, and industry contacts of direct relevance to their work when they attend the show.

"In addition to the thousands of plastics processors and converters who manufacture packaging, the people who will profit from visiting NPE 2003 include package designers and specifiers for food, beverage, cosmetics, pharmaceutical, and any other companies that use packaging," says H. Gunther Hoyt, Chairman of NPE 2003. "Advances in polymer technology continually make possible new package concepts, raise the standards for package performance, and create new values for consumer appeal. For anyone with a need to know the next big thing in packaging, the place to be is NPE 2003."

The NPE 2000 show set three NPE records: number of exhibiting companies (2꯮), net exhibit space (1걮꽤 sq. ft./106겓 sq. m), and number of registered participants (90걮).

The importance of packaging at NPE 2003 is suggested by the results of a survey of exhibiting companies conducted by SPI. Of 550 respondents, many reported serving sectors of the packaging industry directly or through their customers. When it came to specific markets, 34% of respondents cited bottles as a key market, 27% cited flexible packaging, 34% cited pharmaceutical packaging, 36% cited cosmetics packaging, and 34% cited other packaging.

Visitors to NPE 2003 will have free admission to the NPE 2003 Conference, held concurrently with the show at McCormick Place. Among sessions relevant to packaging will be multiple presentations on blown and cast film extrusions, thermoformable sheet, and high-output injection molding. Plus there will be individual sessions on inspecting for gels and other defects, new high-gloss styrenic resins for cosmetics containers, reducing costs for developing new bottles and closures, and drying of PET and other resins. Organizing the Conference for SPI is the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE).

In addition to the free Conference sessions, SPE will also offer on-site a full schedule of its well-known Seminars, providing professional training in extrusion, thermoforming, injection molding, raw-material, and other technologies. Seminars will be available to registered show visitors at a special rate.

For a complete alpha listing of NPE exhibitors, see: packworld.com/go/w070