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If time were weight and trade shows were fodder, then Easyfairs efficiently served up four convenient takeaway snacks last month: neatly sandwiched within a pair of interconnected halls that could easily be lost in any one of the 19 that will be stacked up at Interpack.

Whatever else, there was nothing to bring on heartburn in Birmingham. Certainly not for the exhibitors, who weren’t obliged to fork out huge chunks of their marketing budgets to indulge in on-site displays of testosterone. Nor indeed for the visitors, whose shoe leather was more likely to have taken a hammering from having to find the show in the first place rather than by trudging around it.

More by default than design, Packaging Innovations can now totally claim to be the UK’s premier event focused on the finished product (as PPMA is for machinery). Even so, contrasted with what’s likely to be on the menu in three weeks’ time, it’s more akin to a burger bar than a banqueting chamber. OK, the recipe appears to work, but what does it say about the strength and credibility of the home market?

Time was when Pakex was an event that could at least be mentioned in the same breath as Interpack; never as big, but undeniably with plenty to show for itself. Subsequent rebranding has proved to be a dispiriting excursion into the last-chance saloon and, by a quirk of the calendar, both its slimmed down successor and the German equivalent of the jolly green giant are strutting their stuff within a month of each other. Comparisons might be odious; nonetheless, they’re likewise inescapable.

Dining options
Packaging Innovations is as affordable as Interpack is unavoidable. By self-definition both are set in their ways: fat-free consumption is embedded in the core of the Easyfairs business model, just as Interpack pretty much glories in obesity. The net result is that visitors can benefit from a light snack or gorge themselves until they are fit to burst.

Either way, you can’t help wondering whether we need trade shows altogether. In a less communicative era, there was plenty to be gained from focusing on a fixed moment in time. Not so now surely that the commercial clock ticks relentlessly 24/7/365.

Sales on-site were always more show than real biz, as I rather suspect that product launches have long since become. Don’t tell me that anyone with a better mousetrap is really going to wait for the world to beat a path to its stand.

To my mind, the abiding saving grace of any event – and a very important one too – is the opportunity it provides to hob-knob with the rest of the packaging world. Easyfairs has proved that that doesn’t necessitate its exhibitors filling up acres of stand-space; Interpack, however, has equally proved that unless you think global, you’ll end up acting parochial.

Anyone for bockwurst?