PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2013

imprint EDITORIAL PUBLISHER Alexander Büchler, Managing Director HEAD OFFICE heidelberg business media GmbH Häusserstr. 36 69115 Heidelberg, Germany phone: +49 6221-65108-0 fax: +49 6221-65108-28 info@hbmedia.net EDITORIAL Doris Fischer : fischer@hbmedia.net Michael Maruschke Ruari McCallion Waldemar Schmitke Ilona Trotter Wolfgang von Schroeter Anthony Withers MEDIA CONSULTANTS Martina Hirschmann hirschmann@hbmedia.net Roland Loch loch@hbmedia.net phone: +49 6221-65108-0 fax: +49 6221-65108-28 France, Italy, Spain, UK Elisabeth Maria Köpke phone: +49 6201-878925 fax: +49 6201-878926 koepke@hbmedia.net LAYOUT AND PREPRESS Exprim Kommunikationsdesign Matthias Gaumann | www.exprim.de READER SERVICES Heike Fischer reader@hbmedia.net PRINT Chroma Druck & Verlag GmbH Werkstr. 25 67454 Römerberg Germany WWW www.hbmedia.net | w ww.petpla.net PETplanet insider ISSN 1438-9459 is published 10 times a year. This publication is sent to qualified subscribers (1-year subscription 149 EUR, 2-year subscription 289 EUR, Young professionals’ sub- scription 99 EUR. Magazines will be dispatched to you by airmail). Not to be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. Note: The fact that product names may not be identified as trade marks is not an indication that such names are not registered trademarks. 3 PET planet insider Vol. 14 No. 11/13 www.petpla.net dear readers, Well, we did it, we PET people ended up with aching feet after tour- ing two leading global exhibitions in just a few weeks. The highly favour- able economic situation could only be of benefit as far as the exhibitions were concerned. At the beginning of the year, the industry’s forward order book had still been below the level of the previous year, but now the VDMA reports that an influx of orders over the summer meant that order books were full. Unsurprisingly, the mood among the exhibitors at each of the fairs was exceedingly buoyant. Many customers – including those from overseas – had been happy to make two trips to Germany. Feedback from a number of exhibitors indi- cates that projects had previously been discussed at drinktec /PETpoint with a view to subsequent finalisation at the K-Fair. Overall the discussions at drinktec/PETpoint were probably more intensive and more technical than in Düsseldorf. Paradoxically, more visitors were spotted on the stands in Düsseldorf. Many companies had worked on developments to coincide specifi- cally with the two events. In the preform sector it was Sipa who caught the eye with their conventional injection moulding line, the XFORM 150 and the XTREME, a PET preform injection-compression moulding machine. KraussMaffei had repackaged the “small“ Netstal as the PET-Line 2400. In the closure cap sector, in an extension of the initiative first launched at the NPE in Orlando, the manufacturers of closure cap lines put on full scale demonstrations. Showcasing their high-speed capping lines at these exhibitions were Netstal, Engel, Sumitomo Demag, Ferromatik Milacron and, of course, Sacmi. Mould manufacturers, unwilling to let the machinery manufacturers have it all their own way, were well represented at both fairs. The days of machine manufacturers working exclusively with independent mould makers are drawing to a close. For example, Engel are no longer working on an exclusive basis with Plastisud in China. The realisation is gradually dawning that, in both the PET and in the closure sectors, the customer pre- fers to act independently and make his own decisions on what is the best solution for him. Yours Alexander Büchler