With attendance through Tuesday evening hitting 207,500 unique visitors, the K tradeshow once again worked its magnet-like pull on the industry’s experts, bringing processors together from around the world to discover the best the suppliers have to offer. Needless to say, exhibitors are thrilled at the strength of the show. “Fantastic!” was the response that KSD staffers heard at stands large and small, and across all processes. 



Edgar Gandelheidt, managing director of Reifenhäuser Kiefel Extrusion (Stand 17C22), says this is the first time in his lengthy K experience where customers actually wanted to sign deals for equipment before the show started so they could reduce their delivery time. This reaction, he says, came from customers around the world and for all types of equipment. Ebullience echoed in the voice of Ignacio Muñoz, CEO at Molecor Technologia (Stand 16D3), a pipe extrusion processor that also makes machinery for pipe orientation, who told the KSD, “[The show] has been overwhelming; it’s almost too much.”
 

Chairman of the K exhibitors’ committee Ulrich Reifenhäuser said he heard nothing but positive feedback about the show from his fellow exhibitors. “The K remains the global marketplace for the plastics industry. For anyone who offers special services or has something new to talk about in our industry, it is imperative to be here,” he told KSD. “I expect any exhibitor who showed up last Wednesday will go home a much happier person by the end of the show this evening.”
 

At Zenith Cutter (Stand 10D08), Todd Gaines, international sales manager, says participation at K had, by Monday evening, generated more than 300 global leads of which only eight were from the U.S. This first-time exhibitor says it would never have met such a wide variety of international prospects if it had not exhibited here. “To show you how serious visitors are, we have had people with specific projects expecting quotes on replacement tools the following day so they can make decisions at the show,” says Gaines.
 

Although not a first-time exhibitor, injection molder as well as machine/moldmaker MGS Mfg. Group (Stand 13B91-17) points out 2010 is the first time the company decided to come with a full presence of four sales engineers manning the stand to handle enquiries. Marketing director John Berg says traffic has been excellent and that even if the company generates only one piece of business, it justifies the investment in time and expense of participation. “Our location in the injection molding equipment hall has drawn crowds everyday,” says the company’s business development manager Adam Simons.
 

Berg says the show offers the opportunity for MGS to meet subsidiaries and other divisions of existing customers that might not know about what MGS has to offer, especially in healthcare and caps and closures sectors where he sees exceptional growth “The K offers such global scope that any player in the plastics equipment field that wants to be taken seriously absolutely has to attend,” says Berg.
 

For thermoforming machine manufacturer GN Thermoforming (Stand 3A36), the K exceeded expectations by a wide margin. “It’s been even busier than we anticipated, and we had high hopes,” said Jerome Romkey, marketing manager at the company. “We’ve a huge customer base in Russia and have seen many of them here. Brazil, Iran, the U.S., they’ve come from everywhere,” he said of the visitors to his stand. On the other side of the tradeshow’s grounds, David Nunes, president of extrusion equipment supplier Hosokawa Alpine American (Stand 16D6), said, “We had a detailed list of companies we wanted to see, and goals we wanted to achieve, and we’re pretty much right on.”
 

At a party on the Netstal stand (15D24) on Monday evening, we asked, “How’s your K?” of Bernhard Merki, the president/CEO of that Swiss injection molding systems specialist. “It has been a very good show for us. The industry is becoming healthy again,” said Merki, adding that his company welcomed many more visitors from outside Europe than in the past. “Many of these were from the Middle East. We have signed a number of orders with companies from that region,” he added, noting this region is getting hot for his company, with the K helping to bring demand to a boil.
 

Materials suppliers also had plenty about which to be pleased. “K show has been a great success for DuPont,” according to Mark Young, marketing manager EMEA at the supplier (Stand 6D33). The unique combination of high-performance materials and renewable technology innovations (we displayed) has been a great recipe.”
 

Adding to that was Brian Johnson, VP business and technology at flame-retardants supplier at first-time K exhibitor Galata Chemicals (Stand 6E24), who said, “We have had substantially more enquiries and leads than we expected—to date, well over 400. Good leads that we believe will lead to business. We’ve closed a number of big contracts at the show and have had ample opportunity to make contact with growth regions, in order to develop our presence there, which is one of the reasons we came to the show. We’ve actually also taken orders at the stand, which in my experience is highly unusual. So I’d say it’s been an excellent show for us. Money well spent!”
 

Paul Lewis, president of first-time exhibitor Heritage Plastics (Stand 8aK19), maker of high calcium carbonate (CaCO3) loading masterbatches, says his company is very excited about the quality of the traffic coming to his booth. “The investment in this show so far has proved very positive for us. Of course you can’t expect an immediate return, but if our company can get just one customer to increase its CaCO3 loading by as little as 1% of an existing application, we will have improved our business as a result of this show,” he says.
 

Craig Farrell, managing director of RTi Europe (Stand 5D06-9), which works behind the scenes to provide purchasing information for processors, said, “As a result of the show, We have met a number of new prospects to visit after the show that we couldn’t have acquired without participation here.” Farrell praised the SPI (Society of Plastics Industries, Stand 13B91-28) for its organization of the U.S. Pavilions at the show.
 

We at the K Show Daily thank you for for all of your help and support, and the best of luck as you pursue all of the leads you’ve made at K 2010.