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Plastics expo kicks off in Yuyao

By Hu Yuanyuan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2009-11-06 16:00

The 11th China Plastics Expo, the largest of its kind in the country, opened today in Yuyao, a city in eastern China's Zhejiang province.

Due to the financial crisis, the contracted value of foreign investment stood at $160 million during the expo, a drop of 39.4 percent compared with that of last year. The previous 10 expos have seen a contracted value totaling 25.9 billion yuan and introduced foreign investment of $1.37 billion.

"To reduce the crisis' impact on the expo, we did lots of job in exploring the potential of new markets, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. Meanwhile, we've been trying to spur the domestic demand," said Zhao Yonghuan, spokesman of Yuyao municipal government, one of the organizers of the expo.

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Thanks to these efforts, over 500 enterprises have ordered all the 2,000 booths in the expo by the end of September, with 30.6 percent of them being international exhibitors and the remaining being domestic firms. However, large companies' average booths, including those of Bayer and Shanghai Bluestar, saw a decrease, falling from 14.7 last year to 12.4 this year. And the participants of small and medium enterprises and High-tech enterprises was up three to four percentage points than the previous year.

Meanwhile, the organizer also resorted to an online transaction market to attract investors. So far, Zhejiang Online Plastics Transaction Center, which is also headquartered in Yuyao, has achieved 80 percent of China's online plastics transactions.

Besides the expo, the China Plastics Industry Development Forum will be held at the same time, basing its theme on the role of technology and innovation to counter the global economic downturn and the better use of energy-friendly techniques in the plastics industry.