• Review of Materialica 2006
• Preview of Materialica 2007
• Preview of Eurocoat 2008

By Diana Lagalante

Grüss Gott!

Materialica, the trade show targeted at industrial decision makers interested in everything that’s new and exciting in the world of materials, materialized for the 10^th time this October at the New Munich Trade Fair Centre in Germany’s third largest city.

It was a show for materials and their applications, surfaces, products and product engineering, and this year 320 companies from fifteen different countries showed their products and services to 7,023 international visitors.

The main areas of this show were themed around “Composites”, “Metal Light”, “Surface”, “Ceramics” and there were also special areas on Nanotechnology, Design, Competence Center, aerospace and boat building.

What caught my attention in particular was a conference presentation about energy consumption and how interest is growing for biodegradable materials like bio-plastics or biodegradable polythene films. The best example of this was the high interest in flax fibers as a reinforcement for concrete in the building and construction industry.

The visitors seemed split into two main groups: the young designers in search of trendy new materials clustered like ants to a honey pot around the only two booths presenting new design trends and materials. Meanwhile, the more business-oriented managers dealt with each other, while the technical people quested for new technologies. I was there on the first day of the show, which was not as busy as expected (“hectic” is, in any case, a word that does not seem to exist in Munich, where everyone seems to be relaxed and enjoying the golden fall weather outside in the beer garden, while eating white Bavarian sausages), but the materials technologists and researchers who were there seemed seriously interested about the topic, as befits a highly technology-based show. Although those of us who were not specialists felt a bit out of place, the show certainly delivered on materials!