Consumer Products

Break the mold on design innovation, consumer value, sustainability, and more!

NPE2012 will be an essential event for merchandisers, designers, and manufacturers of plastic consumer goods. To succeed in the consumer marketplace, these companies must build into their products a challenging combination of values. Shelf appeal, style, color, timeliness, economy, functionality, ease of use, and now sustainability as well—all play a role in winning new business. Only at NPE2012 will companies find in one place all of the technological innovations they need to create new consumer values that will set them apart from competitors. 

What occurs first in the mind of a consumer product designer—discovering an idea for the Next Big Thing, or discovering a technology that could make it a reality? Either way, discovery will take many forms at NPE2012.

Search the exhibitors’ product lines online and create a “My Show Planner” schedule to organize your trip to NPE2012.

TechnologyCentral@NPE2012

Focus your NPE experience and see the Emerging Technology Pavilions on Material Science, Sustainability and Energy. Also check out the nine Market Pavilions targeting such areas as Moldmaking, Thermoforming and Processing.

As a backdrop to the exhibits, NPE2012 will offer the most comprehensive educational program in the plastics industry worldwide. SPI’s Business of Plastics Conference will offer tracks dedicated to bioplastics, sustainability, medical & healthcare and advocacy, regulatory affairs & safety. SPE’s ANTEC 2012 will offer white papers on these and additional technical issues.

On the exhibit floor will be innovations in raw materials and processing systems that create new capabilities in product design. Special multi-exhibitor pavilions will focus exclusively on some of these technologies—elastomers, thermoforming, and flexible vinyl, for example—and feature examples of the product innovations they make possible. Still other technologies will be disclosed in educational programs and conference sessions held concurrently with the exposition. And the second International Plastics Design Competition will highlight new products that look to be the Next Big Thing in their particular consumer market segments.     

Some of the innovations to be discovered at NPE2012 are sure to involve technologies like these:

Materials and techniques that support sustainability, including plastics derived from renewable raw materials, biodegradable plastics, methods for incorporating recycled materials into finished goods, design for recyclability, and processing systems and designs that reduce the amount of raw material consumed per product.

Advanced molding techniques: multilayer injection molding of parts incorporating core layers of recycled material or weight-reducing foams; multi-material injection molding that consolidates more than one end-use function into a single part; micro-molding systems for consumer electronics that grow ever smaller yet offer ever more features; blow molding of strong, lightweight double-wall structures, from toys to utility boxes, that incorporate multiple molded-in design features.

High-strength raw materials—ranging from tough engineering polymers to fiber-reinforced compounds to nanocomposites—that extend the performance and increase the durability of products like sporting goods, furniture, and lawn and garden tools.

Thermoplastic elastomers that add soft-touch, non-slip, cushioning, and sealing features to small appliances, personal care items, housewares, writing instruments, and a host of other consumer products, combining the resilience of rubber with the design freedom, processing ease, and colorability of thermoplastics.

Additives that impart bright colors or intriguing special effects, enhance toughness, yield inherent resistance to mildew and other microorganisms, or contribute other values to consumer products.

Design engineering tools and resources that make it possible build into products new functionalities and stylistic features without compromising processability and physical properties.

Producers and merchandisers to the entire spectrum of the consumer product market will benefit from attending NPE2012. Here are some of the market sectors where plastics are the preferred materials of design: