ArabPlast 2017, the international plastics, petrochemicals and rubber industry trade fair, concluded recently with ambitious aspirations for the future of the industry locally and regionally.

The event, held under the theme of “together we innovate”, from January 8 to 10 at Dubai World Trade Centre, saw participants reiterate their determination to adopt innovative strategies in order to develop productions’ capacities in a sustainable and effective way.

“In ArabPlast 2017, participants were able to find out about the latest technologies, machineries and trends of designing products that give a better quality of life to end users,” remarked Satish Khanna, the general manager of Al Fajer Information and Services.

According to the GPCA Innovation Survey 2015, the number of companies that have formulated an explicit innovation strategy has doubled from 21 per cent in 2010 to 41 per cent in 2015.

According to Khanna, the 13th edition of ArabPlast 2017 has indeed seen an impressive rate of participation.

The exhibition also displayed world-class machineries and techniques in injection molding, blow molding, wrapping and packaging, as well as pre and post plastic processing techniques, and raw materials such as additives and polymers.

“We have received great feedback from exhibitors and visitors alike. ArabPlast is definitely the rendez vous for decision makers from the industry, technical experts, global processing companies and suppliers to meet, to exchange expertise and share best practices and make business deals,” remarked Khanna.

ArabPlast 2017, he stated, has enhanced its global rank as one of the leading pertrochemicals and plastics events in the world, by playing a crucial role in bringing European, American and Asian plastics machinery technologies to the Middle East and North Africa.

"Given that the Middle East – mainly the GCC countries and Iran – exported in 2016 19.83 million tons of polyolefins to world markets, up from 18.84m tons in 2015," said Khanna, citing the data from ICIS, the world's largest petrochemical market information provider.

This year's exports are expected to reach 20.59 million tonne, with over 7 million tonne going to Northeast Asia and close to 4.5 million tonne to the rest of Asia, and 5.4 million tonne going to Europe, he added.-TradeArabia News Service