Everyday Plastics Blog

AkzoNobel to add plant at Ningbo multi-site for its Functional Chemicals business
AkzoNobel is to build an additional plant at its Ningbo multi-site for its Functional Chemicals business. The new ?17 mln project ? part of a total investment of ?275 mln ? will further expand the company?s rapidly growing organic peroxides activitie……
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JM Eagle case takes an odd turn
Can a lawsuit be racially insensitive? The whistle-blower lawsuit over the quality of plastic pipe extruded by JM Eagle took another unexpected twist today, when the company issued a news release saying that several “major minority-rights organizations, including the Anti-Defamation…
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Beneficiaries of India’s antidumping against Chinese presses
Chinese press makers could do nothing but regret India’s decision to impose antidumping duties on injection molding machines from China since last May. But the question is how their market share in that country has been replaced.

Apparently, Taiwanese machinery firms are among those who benefit from this policy. Taiwan’s Chuan Lih Fa Machinery Works Co. Ltd. saw its market share rise in India in 2009, which helped the company hold its overall sales during the crisis.

Other major injection press exporters, such as Japan and Germany, probably have benefited as well, although I haven’t found solid stats to back up the theory. Maybe presses from these countries are in a price range that don’t directly compete with Indian or Chinese machines.

I’m most curious about whether Indian local press makers have found the antidumping action useful or valuable.

The only company that actively called for the antidumping probe was L&T Demag Plastic Machinery Ltd. of Chennai, although the government also mentioned three non-applicant companies — Ferromatik Milacron India Ltd., Windsor Machines Ltd. and Electronica Machine Tools Ltd. — when trying to justify the action.

The ownership structure of L&T Demag Plastic Machinery Ltd. changed on March 31, 2009. Larsen & Toubro Ltd. bought out joint venture partner Sumitomo (SHI) Demag plastics Machinery GmbH’s share and made the operation a wholly owned entity: L&T plastics Machinery Ltd.

I imagine that L&T is a poster child of India’s fast growing manufacturing sector. For instance, the Mumbai-based conglomerate helped build India’s first nuclear powered submarine, which launched in July.

L&T chairman A.M. Naik was quoted in a Machinist article as saying, “Over the last four decades, L&T has played a crucial pioneering role in building India’s strategic sectors by successfully executing several technology-intensive and challenging projects.” Mr. Naik himself made BusinessWeek’s “India’s 50 most powerful people 2009.”

L&T plastics Machinery Ltd. claims production capacity exceeds 1,000 machines per year, according to its Web site.
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It’s tough to be a consumer in China
Chinese consumers are very different than their American equivalents. I try to avoid making generalizations, but many Chinese consumers are not that sophisticated, due to cultural, historic and economic factors.

Here is an example. Plenty of commercials still tout that products have passed the national standards. “Really, meeting the national standard is a minimum requirement to enter the marketplace, but many consumers believe that makes an exceptionally good product,” said Chen Changjie, deputy supervisor of the Plastic Packaging Professional Committee of the China Packaging Federation.

He was speaking at the Industrial Forum on Green plastics and Rubber during last week’s Chinaplas show.

The reason why some consumers misunderstand the “meeting-standards” claim is because decades ago, when modern manufacturing just started in China, being able to meet national standards was a big deal.

At least that’s my version of explanation. But the truth is, although China has been making strides in manufacturing, especially for exports, the Chinese domestic market is still filled with subpar products.

I have written in my blog about how widespread counterfeiting is in China, not just of luxury or brand items. Subpar-quality products are even more overwhelming.

The government should take some blame for failing to regulate the market in an effective manner. The consumers also lack the awareness, knowledge, experience and support to defend consumer rights.

Take the possibly toxic foam take-out containers I used the other day. Knowing that the containers were probably mislabeled and low quality, an average consumer doesn’t have an efficient way to solve the problem or file a complaint with the authorities.

Of course, I also notice some improvement during this trip. More retailers honor return policies, product design is getting better in general, the availability of foreign products and service is amazing, — which makes sense given the number of Western expats in places like Shanghai.

In that sense, it’s more accurate to state that it’s tough to be a grassroots consumer in China. The top of the pyramid should feel just as comfortable as anywhere else in the world.
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Purple pokeberries hold secret to affordable solar power worldwide
Pokeberries — the weeds that children smash to stain their cheeks purple-red and that Civil War soldiers used to write letters home — could be the key to spreading solar power across the globe, according to researchers.
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Watching a living brain in the act of seeing — with single-synapse resolution
Scientists report evidence that individual neurons carry out significant aspects of visual processing. Their novel microscopy method makes it possible to observe individual synapses on a single neuron in a living mammalian brain. Focusing on neurons involved in processing movement-related signals, they discovered that an individual neuron integrates inputs from many synapses into a single output — a decision, in essence, made by a single nerve cell.
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Curcumin nanoparticles ‘open up’ resistant cancers
Pre-treatment with curcumin, a component of the spice turmeric, makes ovarian cancer cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Researchers found that delivering the curcumin via very small (less than 100nm) nanoparticles enhanced the sensitizing effect.
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Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico nears the coast
A new image acquired by ESA’s Envisat shows oil from the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a dark blue swirl advancing toward the Louisiana coast.
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New reliable method based on patients’ gait helps to diagnose fibromyalgia
A researcher from Spain has designed a reliable method that — combined with the diagnostic criteria of the American College of Reumathology — helps to diagnose fibromyalgia on the basis of patients’ walk parameters, i.e. their gait.
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Researchers preparing for Blue Waters: Most powerful supercomputer in the world
Researchers are preparing their computational chemistry tools for the Blue Waters supercomputer and its quadrillion calculations per second. Blue Waters is expected to be the most powerful supercomputer in the world for open scientific research when it comes online in 2011.
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