UNITIS, the European organization of cosmetic ingredients industries and services, has called the trade show organisers to postpone “all the planned fairs till the next year 2021, without any financial penalties for exhibitors.”

The position of UNITIS is very similar to that expressed by the European Federation of Cosmetic Ingredients (EFfCI) which, in a separate letter, asked trade show organizers not to attempt to include "a whole year of events in 3 or 4 months".

“Nowadays, the top priority is protecting the health and safety of the employees of the whole supply chain whilst recovering the industrial production and the R&D projects in order to adapt to a new situation demanding new commercial approaches and under enormous pressure to reduce costs. Consequently, the industry is not in the position to invest efforts, time and money in organizing or attending exhibitions and, for safety purposes, most of the companies of the sector have issued internal policies limiting the travels of their teams and prohibiting the attendance to large events. Those policies are likely to remain in practice for the whole year 2020. As a result, the expected attendance to exhibitions is very low,” explains UNITIS.

“Cosmetics cannot live in a bubble,” wrote UNITIS in an open letter to the organizers of trade events.

Most of the trade shows, seminars and conferences that were scheduled during the first half of the year have been either cancelled or postponed. The in-cosmetics Global trade show, the major event for cosmetics and personal care ingredients, which was originally due to take place in Barcelona, Spain, from March 31 to April 2 was initially postponed to June 30 - July 2, 2020, before being rescheduled for October 2020.

In Asia, PCHi China, which was the first cosmetics fair to be impacted by the new epidemic has maintained its rescheduled dates and is due to take place from July 8 to 10 at the World Expo Exhibition & Convention Centre in Shanghai.