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Business

ChemSpec India Charges On

Trade show preserves relevance despite smaller number of exhibitors

by Jean-François Tremblay
April 23, 2007 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 85, Issue 17

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Credit: Jean-François Tremblay/C&EN
Credit: Jean-François Tremblay/C&EN

The third ChemSpec India trade show took place on April 18-19 in the Indian business hub of Mumbai. The trade fair for sellers and buyers of fine and specialty chemicals attracted a diverse domestic and international audience who appeared satisfied with the event despite its being smaller than last year's.

In a comment representative of the reactions of many exhibitors at the show, Pankaj Kapoor, president of acetyls, ethanol, and specialty gases at Jubilant Organosys says, "There is less of a crowd this year, but the discussions are more substantial."

Ravi Raghavan, the editor of the Indian magazine Chemical Weekly, which was cohosting the trade show, says there were 2,000 exhibitors occupying 220 stands this year. Last year, 3,200 exhibitors showed their wares in 290 stands. Attendance numbers for the whole show were not available at press time, but Raghavan says that nearly 5,000 visitors showed up on the first day, whereas 8,500 came over two days last year.

The show's smaller size was largely due to increased competition from other trade fairs, Raghavan says. In particular, he notes that the pharmaceutical ingredients trade show CPhI India was held for the first time last December. "I am not surprised we had fewer booths," Raghavan says.

Companies from China accounted for about one-third of the exhibitors. Isabel Dong, a project manager for China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, says Chinese fine chemicals producers are curious about the Indian market. In recent years, she says, Indian pharmaceutical producers have been buying more and more chemicals from China.

But many Chinese fine chemicals producers selling to India still don't have a reliable agent to represent them in the country, she says. She further notes that being insufficiently familiar with India can be costly. Chinese companies, she says, have at times shared confidential pricing information with their competitors in India, mistaking them for potential customers.

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