The birthday party begins

 
Erhardt Rustler, interpack president

The opening in the Tonhalle was a festive occasion. Under the baton of conductor Georg Fritzsch, the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra played Robert Schumann’s Symphony Nr. 3 in E flat major and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Soloist Akiko Suwanai, the youngest ever winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition, gave a brilliant performance for the 50th anniversary of interpack together with the symphony orchestra of the North Rhine-Westphalian capital.

Before the concert, interpack President Erhard Rustler opened the world’s leading packaging trade fair very close to the so-called “Ehrenhof”, where the opening event of the very first interpack took place in 1958. “Aging symptoms are entirely alien to interpack,” said Rustler in his opening speech, referring to the new visual appearance of the trade fair with its revised logo and the dynamic yellow band, as well as the wealth of innovations to be expected once more from the packaging industry which again highlight the innovative strength of this sector.

Looking forward to the days ahead, the interpack President said: “Current international developments continue to provide cause for optimism: not only is the economic situation in Europe promising in spite of a slow-down in growth, but also the developing markets in Eastern European countries – especially Russia – and of course in Asia, too, are beginning to offer new sales outlets for our industry.” He said that this was one of the reasons why he was confident that the industry would be able to draw a positive conclusion by the end of this year’s interpack. “In any case the impulses sent out to the market by this trade fair will have a lasting impact on the packaging world over the next three years,” said Rustler, who is also Managing Director of Theegarten-Pactec from Dresden, one of the exhibitors at this anniversary interpack.

Three years ago 176,000 visitors came to interpack – that was a new record at the time which the initiators of the present exhibition under manager Bernd Jablonowski will no doubt take as their benchmark. The latest interpack also addresses the needs of a market which is currently seeing healthy development. This is reflected not only in the increase of exhibition space dedicated to traditional exhibitors but also in the large number of companies who will be presenting at interpack for the first time. Topics such as sustainability, bioplastics and the “Innovationparc Packaging” with its holistic view of packaging from packaging material design to the packaging process itself are evidence of interpack’s capacity to remain the key trade fair of the packaging industry internationally. And of course, interpack will celebrate itself a little, too: in the gallery in Hall 6 there will be a special exhibition entitled “50 Years of interpack” – a look back over five decades of packaging history.