Plastech: Just a few months ago, while walking through the exhibition halls in Düsseldorf during K 2025, it was easy to feel tempted to buy. Everywhere, gleaming production cells were on display, and the event’s slogan, "The Power of Plastics! Green – Smart – Responsible", promised a bright, green and digital future. The warmth and hospitality of the exhibitors seemed designed to distract from one uncomfortable fact: truly groundbreaking innovations – the kind K trade fairs were once known for – were, in practice, largely absent.

And yet, once we were back in Poland, opened our laptops, and left the exhibition glamour behind, it was not futuristic visions that greeted us, but the same old, reliable – or rather merciless – Excel spreadsheet. And it is Excel, not a colourful exhibitor brochure, that is setting the rules of the game for 2026. So let us ask the question soberly: can we really afford to be “smart” when the market is saying “stop”?

Since K 2025, our inboxes have been filling up with offers collected at the fair. High-speed all-electric injection moulding machines, automatic process correction systems, digital twins. Wonderful technology, necessary technology – and expensive technology. At the fair, we heard repeatedly that energy efficiency is no longer optional. And that is true. With Polish electricity prices reaching nearly EUR 107/MWh in September 2025, compared with an EU average of around EUR 80/MWh, every kilowatt-hour matters. The problem is that implementing a machine that consumes 20% less electricity requires capital – and not every company has that capital today. So we are facing a paradox: in order to survive, we need to invest in energy efficiency, but in order to invest, we need liquidity – and that liquidity is being consumed by energy costs and weak demandy.

On top of that comes the biggest myth of recent years – one that is now collapsing fast: the profitability of recycling. At the trade fair stands in Düsseldorf, the term “circular economy” was repeated in every possible form. The reality? Virgin PET is cheaper than recycled PET (rPET). This is an economic aberration that leaves purchasing managers facing a serious dilemma: on one side of the scale, environmental responsibility; on the other, the bottom line. More than 110 organisations have already appealed to Brussels for help, warning that cheap imports from Asia are pushing European recyclers to the brink.

In this landscape, managers of manufacturing plants are facing a deeply contradictory dilemma. On the one hand, they hear: “Invest! Digital transformation! Circular economy! PPWR!” On the other hand, when they look at their operating profit margins, they hear from their boards – or simply from their own business instinct: “Cut costs. Freeze CAPEX. Survive.” This tension is clearly reflected in industrial sentiment indicators such as Manufacturing PMI, which remains below the symbolic threshold of 50 points.

Does this mean we should shut down our plants and switch off the lights? No. It means that 2026 will be a year of verification. The market will brutally separate “nice-to-have” innovations from those that are truly “must-have”. The time for buying technology for prestige, or for vague ESG ambitions set for 2030, is over. What begins now is the era of solutions that make sense in Excel within a quarter, not within a decade.

Anyone who thinks that crisis will stop progress is mistaken. It will merely redirect it. The winners will be those who understand that, in 2026, innovation does not need to shine on the exhibition floor. It needs to make sense on the balance sheet. And perhaps it is precisely this “boring” market realism – rather than yet another revolution from a glossy brochure – that our industry needs most right now. Because in the end, the most efficient factory is the one that remains profitable under any conditions – even when the market says: “prove it.”