Page 42 - Packaging News magazine May-June 2022

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AUSPACK REVIEW | www.packagingnews.com.au | May-June 2022
AUSPACK sets stage for the great
AUSPACK 2022, the industry’s first in-person exhibition since 2019, was well attended by the processing and packaging community, with strong themes around sustainability, Industry 4.0, automation and local machinery manufacturing running through the show. The PKN crew was there, in partnership with media stablemates Food&Drink Business and Print21.
THE show, held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre from 17 to 20 May, attracted a high calibre of “quality” visitors to see the latest trends and tech from 200-plus exhibitors. There was more working machinery on show than ever before, much of it on dis-
play from the largest contingent of Australian exhibitors for the show to date. Lucrative sales were recorded over the four-day event, which also featured the AUSPACK Leaders’ Forum and Solutions Theatres that covered a variety of industry topics, as well as in-depth overviews of tech- nology, solutions and strategies.
The industry’s ‘night of nights’ – the APPMA Awards of Excellence Gala Dinner – was a sell-out event attended by 450 packaging and pro- cessing industry professionals. Foodmach, Fibre King, GS1, Packsize,
Trimatt Systems and Laco Automation were victorious, with emerging lead- ers from HMPS and Rhima also recognised (for the full report see Machinery Matters supplement with this issue).
News of a ground-breaking trade show transition was delivered at the Gala Dinner, with Mark Dingley, APPMA chairman, announcing that
ABOVE & RIGHT: Technology, information and expertise combined to deliver a stand-out show.
BELOW LEFT: Creating engaging content – the PKN crew.
flagship exhibition AUSPACK would be transformed to become the all-of- industry event, APPEX – Australasian Processing & Packaging Expo (see more on page 3 of Machinery Matters).
IT’S GOOD TO BE BACK
AUSPACK 2022 was a huge success across all key performance metrics, according to Dingley, who said: “More importantly, the return of face-to-face discussions with working machinery demonstrated the importance of our show to the industry, with all mem- bers we have had conversations with reporting exceptional results.”
Feedback from visitors and exhibitors PKN spoke to was over- whelmingly positive, with everyone pleased to be back at an in-person event. This is what some of the exhibi- tors said about the ‘great return’:
“It’s a great experience to be exhib- iting at the show after a three-year hiatus. AUSPACK is the first major