As the K2013 closed its doors, it was once again on impressing track records. Even if the number of visitors slightly decreased compared to the K2010 Fair (from 222.000 in 2010 to 218.000 this year), the International Trade Fair for Plastics & Rubbers remains the world’s first place to be while processing, using or designing with plastics & rubbers. The number of exhibitors increased from 3.100 up to 3.200 between K2010 and K2013. As stated by Messe Düsseldorf, the Kunststoffe organizers said “no firms producing or using plastic goods missed this chance to find out about the innovations of today and the trends of the future at K2013”. Reflecting the global megatrends in K2013, new products and technologies announcements were dominated by environmentally friendly yet cost-effective solutions. Additives were no exceptions to this. Even though common thought could be that because amount of additives in polymer formulations remains very low (apart from plasticizers in flexible PVC of course) having renewably based additives does not significantly impact the final formulation's renewable content. In fact, these kind of statements may sound logical but is far from giving the real picture. As detailed below, new products and solutions announcements that we have selected during the K2013, tells that if the additive content is always very low in polymer formulations, then their role is just critical. Without additives no plastic goods! After the K2013 event, we could even say: Without new additives no improved plastic & rubber formulations neither!