PACKAGING Innovations & Luxury Packaging London has been postponed to December due to the ongoing Covid-19 situation.
The event was scheduled to take place on September 23 and 24 at Olympia London. Organiser Easyfairs has now switched the dates to December 8 and 9, stating that it will be a ‘valuable opportunity to gather and reignite business opportunities as the world emerges from the coronavirus pandemic’.
Renan Joel, divisional director for Easyfairs UK & global’s packaging events, said, “The international outbreak and spread of Covid-19 has had a huge impact on everyone’s lives, and specifically in the exhibitions industry on the ability to bring people together and run live events. Whilst we have worked hard on health and safety measures to ensure that we could be very positive about the running of a safe and successful event in September, the two-week quarantine period for anyone arriving in the UK that was recently enforced as part of the UK Government Action Plan to tackle the coronavirus outbreak, followed by last week’s announcement from the Prime Minister that events are only able to run as from 1 October 2020, has unfortunately put us in the Force Majeure position of having to move the show.
“Being a truly international show, Packaging Innovations & Luxury Packaging receives 43.3% of its exhibitors from 17 different countries outside the United Kingdom; these current travel regulations make it impossible to run such an international exhibition in September. In addition, the government announcement on Friday opening up events to run from 1 October confirms that we can safely and successfully run the event in December.
“Having already spoken to many in our community, we have been overwhelmed by the positivity and enthusiasm with which the move has been received and the support that the packaging industry has shown for our events generally. It is very clear that they will play a crucial role in the rebuilding of many sales pipelines in sectors that have suffered, and are vitally placed to bring the industry back together after a long period of distancing – social and physical”
Easyfairs added that it has been closely monitoring developments in recent months, specifically taking into account advice and recommendations from the World Health Organisation as well as local governments. As such, it has been working on a series of health and safety measures to ensure the safe running of its business to business events programme in the autumn, to allow for social distancing and the highest sanitary levels.
Joel added, “We are looking forward to running an event in December that adheres to the highest level of sanitary and health standards, and will share more details in due course regarding the measures we will be putting in place to do so. We know that the packaging community will have absolute confidence in attending the event with their safety and health being top priority.”
Easyfairs revealed it has also launched a series of webinars that provide content and tackle discussions that are ‘vitally relevant to the packaging community at the current time’ under its Packaging Innovations, Empack, Luxury Packaging, ADF, PCD and PLD brands. Called ‘Innovation Talks’, the free to join webinars include presentations and panel discussions.
