Interplas
In an Interplas special edition of his exclusive column, Philip Law, Director-General of the British Plastics Federation, looks back into the archives to see how the show has helped ‘mould’ the industry events scene in the UK and why there’s reason to celebrate come September.
I’m looking forward to Interplas. It will be opened on the morning of 26th September by Bruce Margetts, our new President, as his first official engagement. The BPF will have a stand from which we will launch a website promoting careers in the UK plastics industry, as well as a range of tools to help the industry address the array of media-related issues which it is currently facing. We will also be distributing the latest edition of the BPF’s Industry Directory, a key tool in our promotion of our members’ products and services.
The BPF’s history book, ‘The Moulding of an Industry’, written by a former General Manager of the BPF, Geoff Stanley, in 1983, tells the story of the origins of Interplas, which go back to the 1930s when the BPF was heavily involved in what was known as the ‘British Industry Fair’ (BIF) where it organised the ‘Plastics’ section.
In 1951, King George the VI, Queen Elizabeth and the old Queen Mary were conducted round a BPF stand of over 2000 square feet, including 23 members, by BPF’s Chairman, Peter Delafield. Buoyed by this success, in the same year, the BPF proposed holding a dedicated British Plastics Exhibition and this was staged at Olympia from 6-16th June. It occupied 9000 square feet, with over 100 exhibitors and 26,000 visitors, including 16,000 from 34 overseas countries. It was organised in conjunction with a publishing firm, Iliffe, to share the financial risk. The rest, as they say, is history.
Back to the aforementioned media-related issues and readers may well be aware of the growing volume of media attention on ‘plastics free aisles’ in supermarkets. This supplemented articles urging us to have a ‘plastics free July’ a short while back. What is missed is the crucial role plastics play in modern life and how not so long ago, in post-war Modern Britain, the quality of life was not so very good. Our diet then was quite limited, but now we have a great diversity of fresh fruits and vegetables, which are available all year round and in great measure. For this we can thank the protective qualities of plastics packaging.
Additionally, levels of hygiene were no so good – I can remember the flies swarming around the butter patts in the local corner shops. Again, improvements were effected by plastics. Modern healthcare has been revolutionised by plastics and if we remove plastics from hospitals we would be left with little more than ranks of metal bed frames. Years ago, large swathes of housing were dependent on weekly coal deliveries but this provided only intermittent heating in what were fundamentally cold buildings. Today, the insulation of a house has been significantly improved by the incorporation of plastics. People avoid plastics at their peril. Let’s just hope nobody is daft enough to refuse a blood transfusion from a plastic blood bag following an accident.
The plastics industry can be very proud of what it does. It has immeasurably improved the quality of life. It’s one reason I would argue, why people are living longer, healthier, brighter and more fulfilled lives than back in the dark dismal days of the late 1940s. This is truly something to celebrate at Interplas.
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