The satellite show START PLAST, to be held 5-9 May 2015 in the Fiera Milano fairgrounds in Rho, Italy, will be heralding new and innovation Italian businesses.

To coincide with the inaugural week of EXPO 2015, START PLAST was founded on the idea of creating a space dedicated to new and innovative enterprises paralleling the main fair populated by established firms, according to the organiser, Promaplast Srl.

START PLAST has the objective of providing a seedbed for new projects in a venue where all the players necessary for launching a start-up can be found and a very positive message can be sent out: it is still possible to do business in Italy.

Mario Maggiani, Managing Director of Promaplast Srl furthered that, together with the technology incubator Comonext, they will select up to a maximum of 50 startups working in the field of plastics. Not just manufacturers, but also converters, creators of machine and process management software, etc. Those selected companies will have the advantage of exhibiting their projects free of charge in the area dedicated to them and bearing the logo START PLAST.

AIFI, the Italian Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, is also a partner in this project. To assist further the start-up firms, organisations – such as venture capitalists that can provide financing for the new enterprises will also be enlisted.

Also present at the show will be research centres and universities that support the PLAST, for example, by organising the Plastic Technologies Award 2015. This is an international design competition produced by POLI.design, a consortium from the Milan Polytechnic, focusing on the development of original and innovative concepts for rapid consumption that exploit the potentials of specific plastics production and conversion technologies.