A long recession and the trouble it has brought for machinery builders does not keep a good company down. A month after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Milacron, Inc. has announced that in no way will this stop the company from exhibiting at NPE2009. In fact, in a Micron announcement on April 16, company president and CEO Dave Lawrence made it clear that participating in NPE is an essential part of doing business. More than that, it is a way to support the industry that, Lawrence said, “has been so good to us.”

A Plastics News story of the same date has more details. It notes that Milacron, like other exhibitors in recent weeks, has found the incentives in SPI’s Stimulus Package for exhibitors a big help for establishing a prominent presence at the big show.

No other manufacturing industry affects as many sectors of the global economy as plastics—so we need to step up and lead the way. And the best place to do just that is NPE2009. Many of our industry’s largest suppliers agree, such as Husky, Engel, Nissei, Sumitomo Demag, Krauss Maffei, Milacron, Toshiba, Conair, DuPont and Sabic, just to name a few. We also have a significant new commitment from Dow as the exclusive underwriter of ANTEC at NPE2009.

To help the entire industry participate, SPI’s executive leadership has created the NPE2009 Stimulus Package to make our triennial trade show more affordable for everyone with incentives extended to exhibitors and attendees alike. In total we have set aside nearly $3 Million to help our industry in this time of need. For our exhibitors with booth sizes from 100 – 3,999 square feet, service credits will range from $150 to $4,500.

Exhibitors above 4,000 square feet will be provided with a one-time move-in allowance in lieu of credits.

To help attendees, we are dialing back to the 2006 registration rate of $60 for advanced registration and $90 at the door. We have additional discount incentives for group delegations and SPI member companies along with early-bird rates and group discounts for SPI’s Business of Plastics conference.

We have also doubled the allotment of VIP passes (allowing free entry) from 170,000 to 340,000 free passes available through all exhibiting companies. That means that no one should have to pay to attend the NPE exhibits—see your suppliers to get your VIP passes.

SPI’s lobbyists have also been working on Capitol Hill doing their part to ensure a successful NPE2009. Basic tax law allows customers to write off the cost of capital purchases over an extended time frame. Thanks to SPI’s aggressive lobbying efforts, the federal stimulus package jump-starts that write-off schedule by allowing customers to immediately write off 50% of purchases. This “bonus depreciation” is an incentive to buy. Since this particular aspect of the federal stimulus package expires at the end of 2009, there’s also an incentive to buy at NPE2009.

NPE2009 is going to be a great event! We have added many new features, educational programming, technical paper presentations, a design competition and 8 co-located events—all geared to create mass appeal to the entire plastics industry value chain.

Check your mailboxes for the first NPE magazine, which details the many features of The NPE Experience.

Now that crude oil prices have fallen from “astonishing” to merely “high,” it seems a bad time to talk about energy-savings. But plastics processors can always save a bundle by increasing energy efficiency, and when oil prices move back up—and they will—this could be the key to success. It’s another reason for them to go to NPE2009 and meet The Energy Misers.

These are machinery exhibitors who have found new ways for processors to cut power costs.

One that comes to mind is Frigel NA, whose Ecodry closed-loop, dry-cooling system has just been awarded the Illinois Governor’s Pollution Prevention Award. Company president Steve Petrakis says the system saves up to 95% on water consumption and energy bills (not to mention eliminating pollution).

And Frigel is not alone. Here are machinery exhibitors who responded to a recent survey by SPI asking about process energy savings:

Nissei ASB says the enhanced design of the molding machines it will exhibit reduces power consumption by 40%.

Novatec will exhibit desiccant wheel dryers, membrane dryers, and infrared dryers that it says use less energy than conventional desiccant systems. Its affiliate Maguire Products will spotlight vacuum dryers said to use one-sixth of the energy of a desiccant system.

Gneuss reports that it will introduce an extruder that processes undried PET bottle flakes directly into end products, using 15 to 25% less energy than conventional systems with dryers and crystallizers.

INCOE Corp. says the use of hot runner systems in nearly all cases reduces molding cycle time and thus energy. Fast Heat will feature its “kilowatt demand reduction” hot runner technology.

Burger & Brown Engineering will exhibit a non-electric mold temperature regulator that replaces conventional electric mold heaters by using the heat from the molding process to bring cooling water to the correct temperature. Similarly, Berg Chilling Systems will show how process heat can be captured, modified, and used in other ways to reduce energy consumption.

Extreme Coatings / Surface Engineering notes that plasticating systems use increasingly more energy as adjustments are made to compensate for screw wear. It will recommend use of its tungsten carbide coatings to reduce such wear in the first place.

You can bet that this is only a tiny sampling of the process energy-saving systems and techniques to be on exhibit at NPE2009. And by then, who knows how high oil and electricity costs will be?

Some people collect classic cars, others collect string. Through sheer unwillingness to clean out my storage room, I collect NPE Exhibitor Manuals. I have 1997, 2000, 2003, and 2006—all of them fat, three-inch ring binders with 15 or so tabbed sections. A lot of paper.

But no more. With NPE2009 looking to have sustainability as its de facto theme, SPI has opted to save the trees—and prevent the consumption of energy for producing and shipping the manuals—by putting it all online. It’s all there in the exhibitor services section of the NPE2009 website for anyone with an official exhibitor password.

This is no mean accomplishment. Anyone who has not exhibited at a major trade show may have a hard time imagining how much advance work a company must do to ensure a successful exhibit, and how absolutely essential the manual is for getting the work done. The beauty of an online manual is that you can click your way through so much of that work.

Want phone service at your booth? Navigate to the appropriate page, choose the service you need, and ADD TO CART. Want to reserve rooms for 25 of your people? Select your hotel and click on BOOK IT.

It’s a brave new world, folks. And paperless.

BEWARE! As an exhibitor, your company information is posted on the NPE2009 website to promote your company to site and show visitors. Many contractors and organizations will use the exhibitor contact information to market their services to you.

If you are contacted by a contractor or organization, please check the NPE2009 Official Contractors list (See Questions area in Exhibitor Services Area on www.npe.org or Section 2 of NPE2009 Exhibitor Manual) to ensure that the company or organization is indeed an official contractor for NPE2009 BEFORE responding to their request. 

SPI is a member of UFI—The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry—and received the following Exhibitor Warning on October 6, 2008:

Exhibitor Warning

Dear UFI Colleague,

In the past we have provided you with information concerning a scam perpetrated against exhibitors by FairGuide.com/Construct Data Verlag with their misleading directory services. Well there is now a new organization, Expo Guide, which is working out of Mexico and which is suspiciously similar to FairGuide. 

Expo Guide/FairGuide.com/Construct Data Verlag target companies through legitimate exhibition guides aimed at exhibitors. Their current activities cover companies throughout Europe, the Americas and Asia. Expo Guide joins FairGuide in claiming to offer online listing services. They use a form which resembles an organizer’s free catalogue listing service, inviting exhibitors to complete the form for an entry in an online directory. Unsuspecting exhibitors who sign and return the form are then contracted into a three-year, non-retractable agreement, which could cost the exhibitor a significant amount of money, with no foreseeable benefits. 

Included in their group is debt collection agency Gravis Inkasso Gmbh and Swiss debt collection agency Premium Recovery AG (a Construct Data subsidiary) which works in partnership with the various guides to intimidate exhibitors into paying.  These publications have no connection with exhibition organizers or any of their events. It is important that all companies who are exhibiting are made aware of this.

We strongly advise our UFI members, all exhibitors and the entire exhibition community, to be most vigilant against this and similar organizations. These organizations can cause extreme damage and harm to the reputation of our exhibition industry. There are many so called guides that mail deceptive contracts and then harass those who sign them in error for money. However the sheer scale and systematic way in which these guides attack the credibility of our exhibition industry is outrageous. So please take the initiative and advise your exhibitors before they are deceived by these fraudulent practices.

Additional information on the Expo Guide, FairGuide and other Construct Data Verlag publications is available on the UFI website http://www.ufi.org and also at www.stopecg.org.

Wondering what to do with your used equipment? Give it a second life—in a motorcyle!

Isn’t it obvious? Consider the Aaron Chopper, custom built for NPE2009 exhibitor Aaron Equipment Company, Inc., a company that knows a thing or two about equipment, used and new.  The gear shift is an extruder screw.  The exhaust pipe is a heat exchanger. The front wheel disc and spokes are a sigma blade mixer. In fact, most of this hot-looking bike is made from components of the used and reconditioned processing equipment that is the company’s specialty.

The chopper was built by Orange County Choppers for The Learning Channel series American Chopper and will be on display again at another hit show—NPE2009.  Aaron Equipment marketing director Mike Real says that American Chopper star Paul Teutul, Sr. will join with the company at NPE to highlight the bike.

Aaron will have an exhibit in the North Hall of McCormick Place (Booth 83031), showing the greatest plastics hits from its 30 acres of plastics, pharmaceutical, chemical, and food processing equipment in Bensenville, IL.

Sorry, folks. Real says the Aaron Chopper will not be for sale at NPE2009. No harm in making him an offer, though.