Fox News features MGS — and toolmaker shortages
Molder and mold maker MGS Manufacturing Group Inc. was featured in a Fox News report last night on the problems that some companies are having finding qualified workers for technical jobs. The report focuses on a problem that plastics News…
Don Kruschke’s statement
Neil Kruschke Jr. may have left the plastics industry in 2009 when he sold Stopol Inc., but he left behind many friends and acquaintances. All were shocked to learn of 44-year-old Neil’s death on Friday in a chainsaw accident near…
America likely to see ‘Manufacturing Renaissance’
Here’s some good news for U.S. manufacturers — a new report from Boston Consulting Group titled “Made in America, Again: Why Manufacturing will Return to the U.S.” According to the report, which was released Aug. 25, the return of manufacturing…
Q. What’s still made in America?
Manufacturing is alive and well in North America — more on that later. But I always get a kick out of companies that serve odd or unusual niche markets. How about bowling balls, CDs and chopsticks, for example? Those great…
Steve Jobs’ impact on plastics
Steve Jobs’ decision to resign as CEO of Apple Inc. last night is the biggest story on the business page today. Jobs is one of the rare corporate CEOs who became a household name. Newspaper readers understand that, no matter…
The next brilliant plastic product: Happy Hot Dog Man?
New ideas, new products — they’re the lifeblood of many plastics housewares molders. You see them in specialty stores and late-night TV ads and infomercials. Today I discovered an unexpected gem: the Happy Hot Dog Man. The plastic device cuts…
plastics firms on the Inc. 5000 list
The folks at Inc. magazine must have had a tough time picking the 5,000 fastest-growing U.S. companies this year. Despite the sour economy, firms that managed to survive the recession have probably experienced growth between 2007 to 2010, the time…
Reality TV features acrylic fabricator
The reality TV craze is looking at the plastics industry this year — well, sort of — with a new program on Animal Planet that features an acyrlic fabricator. It’s not just any fabricator, though. The subject of “Tanked,” which…
Which supplier supports the Cleveland Orchestra?
Trivia time: Which plastics material supplier pledged this week to donate $1 million over the next three years to the world-famous Cleveland Orchestra? If you answered Lubrizol Corp., give yourself an appropriate fanfare. The Wickliffe, Ohio-based company made headlines this…
Half-year results of China’s 1st coal-to-olefins project
China’s Shenhua Group officially started commercial production at the Baotou coal-to-olefins project on Jan. 1, 2011. The company recently announced a six-month review of the project, which was the first of its kind in China.
With capacity utilization rate kept above 85 percent, the project produced 273,040 metric tons of polyolefins and sold 263,290 tons in the first six months, according to reports from local media in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. Adding in sales of byproducts, the project achieved total sales of 3.1 billion yuan (US$484.8 million) and profit of 875 million yuan (US$136.9 million).
The project uses Unipol technology licensed from Dow Chemical Co.