Recycling issues in the spotlight at Central Europe's largest plastics event

Over seven years, the event has changed considerably, although the original idea of combining an exhibition, a conference and B2B meetings has been retained. Over the years, this event has become one of the most important meeting places for the plastics industry in Central Europe, offering industry representatives the opportunity to strengthen their contacts, expand their networks and learn about the latest trends and regulations. This year, the event was attended by 590 professionals from 25 countries and almost 400 companies from across Europe and beyond, including guests from Egypt and China. Perhaps even more telling than these figures is the fact that registered visitors booked more than a thousand inventions. These were not only suppliers of commodity polymers, but also of engineering plastics, additives and regranulates.

Another important tradition of the meetings is that leading national and international industry figures attend the conference sessions to discuss important topics affecting the industry, with this year's focus on the packaging directive to be introduced in 2025 - 2030 and the waste concession system introduced in Hungary.

In the technical tent, participants could learn about current injection moulding challenges with the help of the country's largest injection moulding machine distributors, as well as about recycled materials in technical applications and efficiency.

Six injection moulding machine manufacturers attended the event, five of whom displayed injection moulding machines directly in the technical tent. Panel discussions were also held on "Efficiency in Injection Moulding" and "Sustainability in Injection Moulding", as well as "The Regional Market and Recycling" and "Conference on Waste Concessions and the Recycling Industry in the EU".

László Bűdy, managing director of myCEPPI and organiser of the event, said: - We received a great deal of positive feedback from participants, and a large number of plastics processors and raw material distributors who attended the event found common ground. They pointed out that a genuine forum for both sales and demand was created during the event. They see us as a highly professional event. Both B2B participants and exhibitors were able to hold 20 to 40 international meetings over two and a half days, depending on their package, which would otherwise have cost them a great deal of time, travel and higher expenses. I am proud that five machine manufacturers exhibited in the technical tent this year, with European and Chinese manufacturers having the largest presence. Of course, we are already thinking about plans for next year. 

Today we are here and would like to broaden the range of exhibitors, but our aim is not to move towards an exhibitor profile; we are and will remain a standalone event. This means that we are strengthening the B2B focus. Our aim is also to have three full-day events in the second half of September. We want to significantly increase the number of companies offering raw materials, compounds and recyclates. 

A new feature next year will be the participation of integration companies looking for suppliers. Plastics processors will thus be able to obtain information in one place about raw materials, supply options and machines that will help them with their production process. We expect recycling to be the main topic of the conference again, as it is still an unresolved issue, and we anticipate developing it as a conference topic,” said László Bűdy.

On the third day of the event, a machinery working group was established, which will operate under the auspices of the Hungarian Plastics Industry Association (MMSZ). In the first round, eight Hungarian machinery manufacturing companies joined the working group: ARBURG Hungária Kft, ENGEL-HUNGÁRIA Kft, Netstal, KraussMaffei, Sumitomo SHI Demag Plastics Machinery Hungária Kft, Thege Plastic Kft, Wittmann Hungária Kft and Tool-Temp Hungária Kft.

Participants discussed the principles of their cooperation and identified the topics they will work on in the future. One of their main objectives will be the annual collection and compilation of national business data, which will be managed and published by MMSZ. They agreed that making this data available would fill a gap spanning several decades. They concluded: the confidentiality of the collected data is important to all machine manufacturers, and this will be ensured by using MMSZ software. Machine manufacturers and suppliers will provide data within an agreed system through an online interface; this data will be consolidated by software, which will then provide a complete picture of Hungarian injection moulding machine sales by category, with aggregate data for all partners.

In the future, the machinery working group will also seek business opportunities that could provide all machine manufacturers with additional sales areas, while it should be noted that this work will not be carried out in opposition to one another, but jointly towards market development.