Viewpoints
Plastics News Managing Editor Don Loepp shares his thoughts on the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc.’s decision to move the 2012 and 2015 NPE shows to Orlando, Fla.
Pressure is building on Chicago to find a way to keep the 2012 and 2015 NPE shows. On Nov. 11, news leaked out that the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society will hold its 2012 gathering in Las Vegas instead of Chicago, because of the high cost of labor at Chicago’s McCormick Place.
Chinese leaders talk a lot about developing an innovation economy, but at least one expert on intellectual property policy believes that won’t happen unless China develops and enforces stronger laws to protect innovation.
In plastics, screw and barrel sales are a leading economic indicator for broader capital spending. I think there’s another predictive relationship between screws and barrels and consolidation in industries suffering from overcapacity.
Will the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. vote to move the NPE 2012 and 2015 shows to Orlando, Fla.? Or will Chicago manage to keep the show in McCormick Place? Not surprisingly, this story is getting a lot of attention. Almost everyone seems to have an opinion.
Investors skilled at buying “on the dip” profited handsomely from the plastics market this year. Once Wall Street decided that the world wasn’t going to end in early March, the market began a steady climb that peaked in mid-September and remains well above its earlier depths.
It’s time once again to pull back the curtain and reveal the mysteries of how Plastics News generates the prices on its resin pricing chart. This is an update of a column I’ve written twice since joining PN in 1997, but it remains a topic that I’m asked about fairly often.
Recently I attended a big aviation trade show in Hong Kong, and saw China unveil its latest attempt to move into high-tech markets — the C919 passenger jetliner it hopes will challenge the two global giants in the industry, America’s Boeing Co. and Europe’s Airbus. But that same trade show also brought home some of the real shortcomings China has in going into these technologically intensive markets.
At a time when caravans of affluent Chinese buy homes in the U.S. with cash, the nation’s corporate overseas buying spree continues with a new level of global mergers and acquisitions knowledge and sophistication. But unlike a real estate deal, cross-border M&A demands harder work after the transaction is completed.
Lisa Kaas Boyle, co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition and a board chair at Heal the Bay — a Southern California environmental lobbying group — contributed a column last week blasting the plastics industry on HuffingtonPost.com. Boyle calls ACC’s effort a “cynical strategy.” Her description sounds awfully cynical to me.
Project Kaisei, one of this summer’s missions to study the plastics vortex in the Pacific Ocean, is back in California. The trip offers the plastics industry an opportunity to learn more about marine debris, a problem that’s been driving bans and taxes on bags and food-service disposables on the West Coast — a trend that we’ve seen gain foothold elsewhere in North America.
The Society of Plastics Engineers is struggling. Plastics industry layoffs, globalization and how to lure young people to join the society are all formidable challenges. That’s why it was so uplifting to hear new members of the Plastics Hall of Fame publicly praise SPE during the hall induction ceremony at NPE.
What is the future of Little Tikes Co. in Hudson, Ohio? The city and state have done their part, offering an attractive financial package to keep the company in its hometown — including tax credits and a low-interest loan.
A face familiar to the plastics industry has become the face of the U.S. government in China. Jon Huntsman Jr., a member of the family that owns part of The Woodlands, Texas-based chemical and plastics supplier Huntsman Corp., arrives in Beijing this month as the new U.S. ambassador.
At one of the most important automotive industry events, the plastics industry continually takes a back seat to a competitor: the metal benders. The American Iron & Steel Institute is far more visible to reporters than the plastics industry at the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars.
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