TOKYO PACK 2018 is nurturing new global audiences for Asia's premier international packaging technology and design show, to sow the seeds of creative, cross-cultural collaborations and fresh approaches to big packaging challenges.

• show theme: “Let's create packaging for all our tomorrows”
• show runs from October 2 – 5, 2018
• booking applications for booths invited from September 11, 2017
• anticipates total footfall of up to 200,000
• expects to pre-register around 70,000 visitors
• free admission for pre-registered visitors

Can the developed world with increasingly more mouths to feed meet its packaging needs while respecting the fragility of the environment? The Japanese packaging industry's much-anticipated international exhibition of packaging technology and design aims to address this dilemma and other social challenges, notably food security and an aging populace.

An unmissable show in Asia's packaging industry calendar, the 27^th Tokyo International Packaging Exhibition TOKYO PACK 2018 officially opens for business on 11 September 2017, when applications start rolling in for prime booth space at Tokyo Big Sight International Exhibition Center, an impressive modern venue in the spectacular setting of Tokyo Bay.

Tokyo - perhaps the most beguiling city in the world - every two years in October hosts one of Asia's most popular and largest displays of newly commercialised and prototype technology and pack design. Marketed under the TOKYO PACK brand, the show is building on its reputation in Asia and on track to achieving a truly international status.

Next year's show expects to register around 70,000 visitors with a significant increase in overseas participation, and total footfall over the four days of the show is likely to reach close to 200,000. The show's organiser, Japan Packaging Institute, is making a concerted push to raise the profile of the TOKYO PACK name abroad and generate worldwide press and media attention that attracts the world's packaging buyers, designers, technology scouts and converters to Tokyo in October 2018. Success will turn the curiosity of first-timers into valuable commercial deals and collaborations that lead to packaging-based solutions for pressing social and environmental challenges that face Japan and all nations in the developed world.

TOKYO PACK 2018 will showcase latest technology and smart design that focuses on the needs of industry, end-consumers and the environment: tailored to success in competitive retail markets, resource efficient and smartly designed inclusively to make products accessible and easy to use and recycle. Systems for prolonging food shelf-life are of special interest in a country prone to distribution disruption by natural disasters.

Explaining Japanese packaging priorities, Shigeo Koshino, general managing director of JPI, organizer of TOKYO PACK 2018, says: “In Japan we love and respect the natural environment, and we want to protect and care for it. But sometimes its power can be destructive, which is when we rely on packaging technology that makes our food chains as robust as they can possibly be. We want packaging that looks after our food and also the planet.”

Through its strategic outreach activities the Japanese packaging industry wants to encourage the pooling of technology and ideas to deal with difficult issues around population growth and aging consumers, food security, diminishing reserves of natural resources and harmful pollution. Japan Packaging Institute is forging relationships to promote the TOKYO PACK brand beyond its historic Asia-based core markets by globally networking within the trade-show community in Europe and the United States of America.

Japan Packaging Institute has crossed the North Pacific for its new role as official partner of PACK EXPO

Las Vegas and Healthcare Packaging EXPO (www.packexpolasvegas.com) at Las Vegas Convention

Center from 25-27 September 2017, produced by PMMI Media Group, part of the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies. The show's 2,000 booth-holders will bring in some 30,000 visitors and JPI representatives will be onsite (booth C-1254) to support its exhibiting members.

Tokyo Pack's marketing strength is being boosted by an alliance with a worldwide cooperative group of trade shows. The organisation known as “The Network” run by All4Pack based in France (www.all4pack.com) gives access to shared market data within a selected group of independently-run, high-quality events that will help to identify new audiences for Tokyo Pack.

TOKYO PACK 2018 is aiming to reach its potential as a meeting place where professionals from East and West can pool ideas, share cultural insights, and build partnerships to develop timely solutions for emerging demands created by social change and the environment.

The show is perfectly timed ahead of the 2019 Rugby World Cup and 2020 Olympic Games, just as Japan is warming up for a massive influx of sports-lovers. Show-goers will see evidence of the mounting excitement all around Tokyo City and experience the genuinely warm welcome that awaits fans. They will enjoy renowned Japanese service and efficiency, which at TOKYO PACK 2018 includes special facilities for nonJapanese visitors, who will have access to a team of translators and find English speakers at most booths.

Japan Packaging Institute president Shigetaro Asano, chairman of Meiji Holdings Co. Ltd, comments: “Tokyo International Packaging Exhibition 2018 will introduce the advanced packaging technology of Japan to the world, looking ahead to the next generation and predicting the trends of the near future, and by doing so promote mutual international understanding.”

Come join us at TOKYO PACK 2018 to create packaging for all our tomorrows!

About TOKYO PACK 2016

• 669 exhibitors were mostly Japan Packaging Institute members
• 162 exhibiting companies came from 15 other countries and regions: Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden, UK, France, USA, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Indonesia, China, Korea and Taiwan
• a total of 184,677 participants (including exhibitors) passed through the gates of Tokyo Big Sight over all four days
• a total of 62,171 visitors pre-registered
• 3,483 overseas visitors pre-registered