By Karen Hanna
Brendan Thomas, VP of advocacy and voice for the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS), has a message for companies that had signed up to exhibit at the now-canceled NPE: If you haven’t yet heard from the trade group, you will.
“If we haven’t heard from them, they will be hearing from us. And it just takes time,” Thomas said.
At around the midpoint between the day the show was canceled and the week in May when it would have taken place, PLASTICS staff members still are working with the companies that had made plans to attend from May 17-21 in Orlando, Fla. Some companies had paid 50 percent down to reserve show booths; others had paid PLASTICS, the show’s sponsor, the full amount.
Bill Duff, GM of sales and marketing of Yizumi/HPM Corp., Iberia, Ohio, said his company incurred a host of expenses related to NPE, some of which it might have avoided had the triennial show been called off earlier. A year after shutdowns first rocked the industry as the world confronted the threat from COVID-19, he said he’s still waiting to hear from PLASTICS.
“Certainly, I’ve requested a refund, but haven’t heard anything as of yet,” Duff said.
He acknowledged the situation has caused problems for everyone, including PLASTICS, which receives a significant portion of its funding from NPE.
More than 2,000 companies planned to take part in NPE, and Thomas said PLASTICS plans to reach out to all of them.
“We made the offer to refund that second 50 percent, and that’s exactly what we’ll do if the customer would rather not invest in membership or the next show. A percentage of them have chosen the latter, but we’re absolutely happy to refund money. And we’ve spent a lot of money. It’s a big expense, any way you cut it. So, because that entire sum of deposits is so large, we just have to take time in accounting for what was best for everyone involved.”
Marko Koorneef, president of Boy Machines Inc., Exton, Pa., reported what he’d heard from PLASTICS: “They are keeping the first deposit as they claim it is not refundable.”
Two months since canceling NPE, PLASTICS is finding acceptance among its members following the initial shock, Thomas said.
“But ultimately, we have reached people personally, they’re happy to have those conversations and the vast majority of them understand why we had to make a decision, why our unwinding the show is going to take some time, not forever, but some time, and how we are attempting to satisfy their financial concerns,” Thomas said. “And we are satisfying a great number of those concerns about refunding that second 50 percent; we’re just simply asking for some time to deal with the entire scenario.”
Contact:
PLASTICS, Washington, D.C., 202-974-5200, www.plasticsindustry.org
Karen Hanna | Senior Staff Reporter
Senior Staff Reporter Karen Hanna covers injection molding, molds and tooling, processors, workforce and other topics, and writes features including In Other Words and Problem Solved for Plastics Machinery & Manufacturing, Plastics Recycling and The Journal of Blow Molding. She has more than 15 years of experience in daily and magazine journalism.
