NEW DELHI (Feb. 17, 10:15 a.m. ET) -- The India Plastics Federation hopes to build a $5 million training center in the state of West Bengal, inside an industrial park set up for downstream petrochemical industries, including plastics processing.

IPF plans to use surplus funds from the Indplas show, to be held Oct. 5-8 in Kolkata, India, to help finance the school, known as the Knowledge Center. It hopes to train up to 300 students each year, said Amar Seth, chairman of both the committee organizing the center and the organizing committee for the Indplas trade show.

In addition to training, the facility would also offer testing services with the cooperation of India’s Central Institute of Plastics Engineering & Technology.

IPF hopes to start construction on the center by May and complete it one year later, Seth said in an interview at the Plastindia trade show, held Feb. 1-6 in New Delhi.

It would target the plastics processing industry and offer courses in a variety of areas, including injection molding, extrusion, blow molding and rotational molding, and is designed to provide trained workers to the more than 40 companies setting up in the industrial park, known as Poly Park, on 60 acres of land Sankrail, near Kolkata in West Bengal’s Howrah District.

The park is sponsored by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corp., and is expected to provide direct employment to 2,000 people and indirect employment to another 6,000.

IPF also plans to set up a demonstration project making wood plastic composite lumber from mixed scrap plastics on the site of the school.

Another trade group, the Plastindia Foundation, has agreed to fund 75 percent of the cost of the WPC project, with the balance coming from surplus funds from the Indplas show. The wood plastic project is one of four that the Plastindia Foundation hopes to set up across the country, as part of a plan to prove it is commercially viable and help create markets for recycled plastic in India.

Seth said Indplas organizers hope to have 400 exhibiting companies at the fair.

At a launch function for the show, held during Plastindia, organizers said Eastern India, including the area around Kolkata, has an average annual plastic consumption much less than the rest of the country, only about 3.5 kilograms per person, compared with about 8 kg. for India as a whole.

“Entrepreneurs located in the other parts of the country can use [Indplas] to promote sales of their products and also set up new units to bridge the demand and supply gap of locally manufactured products,” Seth said.