A plastics-recycling company in Liverpool has been fined £2,500 after a worker had four fingers cut off by a guillotine.
The Health and Safety Executive prosecuted Centriforce Products Ltd following the incident at the company's premises on Derby Road near the city's docks on 26 May 2008.
Increasing cost for oil, natural gas and the intermediates derived from them have driven significant increases in prices for our raw materials, particularly styrene, maleic anhydride and glycols. These changes along with the expectation for these elevated prices to last at least into the second quarter make the price adjustment a necessity, said Gerhard Bohme, Business Director North America, Composite Polymers.
A Charlotte-based polymer company has leased a 3,000-square-foot lab at the Research Campus in Kannapolis, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture today will award the campus $1.1 million to launch a program for graduate students.
Plastic is the new black.
Zeachem, which has devised a somewhat unusual technique for converting wood scraps and cellulosic material into fuel and other substances, has tinkered with the genome of its organisms to crank out a chemical that's a precursor to propylene, a major ingredient in packaging and plastics. The second bug will effectively give the company two product lines: ethanol (and ethanol precursors) that will get sold to the fuel market and chemicals for specific applications.
The economic downturn has struck another area employer.
Solvay Advanced Polymers, on Ohio 7 south of Marietta, will permanently lay off as many as 23 employees by Nov. 17, according to plant manager Wally Kandel.
The company combines color, which it formulates to its customer's needs, with clear plastic resins to create a raw material which the customer uses in products that span all facets of the plastic industry -- from tubes to toys, syringes to shavers.
The state will release $2.6 million in grants to three organizations, including one in Central Ohio, through its Thomas Edison Program.
The state Controlling Board this week approved handing out the grants, aimed at spurring high-tech development in Ohio. Westerville-based PolymerOhio Inc. clinched a $650,000 grant as a designated Edison Technology Center, an arm of the larger state program that helps companies in the market entry phase of product commercialization.
Both across the business world and in the plastics industry, many companies moved quickly to cut or freeze wages, eliminate discretionary bonuses, and change executive compensation formulas and measures for 2009 in an effort to conserve cash and make more compensation hinge on performance.
However, a number of listed plastic product makers are on track for their best-ever year in terms of profits, as they reaped the benefit of product innovations and lower production costs.
Technology advancements are creating new engineering opportunities for elastomers, offering designers and manufacturers new options for developing green products.
Effective September 1st, 2009, or as contracts allow, BASF will increase prices in Europe, Africa and Western Asia for styrene-acrylic and straight-acrylic dispersions by €70-90 per metric ton, for styrene-butadiene dispersions by €120-150 per metric ton and for polymer powders by €150 per metric ton. The price adjustment is necessary due to increased raw material cost.
Charlotte-based Polymer Group says the divestiture is part of its strategy to focus on its core nonwovens business.
Since April 2009, the 5,000th blow molder sold by Sidel has been making PET beer bottles at one of the leaders on the world beer market, Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Engineering resins leader DuPont Co. has selected PolyOne Corp. as its primary resin distributor in North America.
Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont had worked with both PolyOne and Ashland Distribution for the last several years, but now “feels the need to be more strongly aligned with a single partner,” DuPont engineering polymers sales director James Hay said in an Aug. 5 conference call.
Clondalkin Group is continuing to expand its North American plastics business with the acquisition of Cleveland Plastic Films.
Ohio-based Cleveland produces a range of flexible plastic films for banner, food and industrial applications, such as the FlameGard Tuflok one-sided printable flame-retardant film.
Several of country’s largest plastics firms say their domestic business is returning to levels before the crisis, and one projection said the industry will resume overall double-digit growth in the second half of this year.
In drawings and diagrams, the William Stanley Business Park resembles a college campus, with attractive brick buildings laid out on landscaped sites that are bordered by green, leafy trees.
This is how the Pittsfield Economic Development Authority (PEDA) envisioned the business park when the General Electric Co. agreed to turn 52 acres of its former transformer facility over to the quasi-public agency formed by the state Legislature in 1998 to develop the parcel.
A decade later, that vision for the business park -- and the hundreds of new jobs that could have come with it -- are still just concepts. Discussions
According to IK Industrievereinigung Kunststoffverpackungen, the German Association for Plastic Packaging and Films, in the first six months of 2009 some 32% of member companies had to introduce reduced working hours. According to a survey, 26% of companies are planning to maintain reduced working hours in the third quarter of 2009.
It was a no-brainer for CP Lab Safety CEO Kelly Farhangi: “In the U.S., you can manufacture on a cost comparable to China.”
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. agreed to take on $6.2 billion in pension liabilities from bankrupt auto supplier Delphi Corp., putting in place a key piece in the bailout of the car industry but renewing pressure on a government agency facing huge burdens as more companies fail.
The pension rescue is the PBGC's second-largest ever, ranked by dollars, after that of United Airlines in 2005, which totaled $7.5 billion. As a result, the government will take over payments for 70,000 workers and retirees that Delphi says it can't afford under its restructuring plan.
But he does not expect hiring to stay stagnant for long.
“The industry is like a spring ready to recoil. They are waiting for a signal that has not come yet,” Gros said in an interview at NPE2009, the International Plastics Showcase, which took place recently in Chicago.
Getting insurance cover for customer credit has been a problem since the recession began last year, but the survey carried out in June shows 79% of respondents experiencing problems obtaining such insurance compared to 48% when the BPF ran the same survey in January this year.
A local plastics company is planning to expand despite the recession that has gripped the nation for more than a year.
Venture Plastics celebrated its successes Friday with an open house for customers and the media at its plant at 4000 Ravenna-Warren Road.
Seven of the 10 largest publicly traded U.S. suppliers not in bankruptcy will say earnings fell from a year earlier or post wider losses for the period ended June 30, based on analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Johnson Controls is expected to report a 68 percent profit decline July 20.
Conn.-based Panolam Industries International, parent to Auburn's Pioneer Plastics, a manufacturer of laminates, has reached a tentative agreement with shareholders to let the company shed $151 million in debt.
Panolam, which bought Pioneer Plastics in 1999, posted $121 million in net losses in 2008 and $10 million in losses for the first quarter of 2009, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission as reported by the Sun Journal. Citing the downturn in the housing industry, Pioneer Plastics laid off 48 employees - about 16% of its local work force - at the Auburn plant in December.
LONDON, July 10 (Reuters) - Plastics contracts are to be scrapped from the London Metal Exchange's trading floor because of low volumes, its chief executive said on Friday, curtailing an experiment begun with their launch in 2005.
But the LME also said overall first half year trading volumes across the range of contracts traded on the exchange were better-than-expected -- defying its own predictions of a slump due to the economic downturn.
A coalition of British plastic industry trade associations pledged this week to double the recycling of plastic packaging by the year 2020.
The ground-breaking campaign, titled the Plastics 2020 Challenge, represents the first time European plastic manufacturers and processors have come together to set recycling targets.
WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwire - July 9, 2009) - The U.S. Department of Commerce published today its preliminary decision in the annual administrative review of the antidumping order on plastic grocery and shopping bags from Malaysia. The Department ruled that U.S. importers of plastic bags made in Malaysia by Euro Plastics Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. ("Euro Plastics") will be required to pay antidumping duties of 43 percent of the customs value on imports entered into the United States from August 2007 through July 2008. Euro Plastics exports these bags to the United States primarily through Euro Packaging LLC, its affiliated reseller located in Salem,
ARLINGTON, WASH. -- Xconomy has learned that MicroGreen Polymers, an Arlington, WA-based developer of technology to recycle plastics into cheaper, environmentally friendly coffee cups among other things, has raised $1.6 million for expansion from WRF Capital and local angel investors (Northwest Energy Angels, Alliance of Angels, and Atlas Accelerator), out of an ongoing round the company expects will net $3 to $4 million later this month.
The money will be used to build up MicroGreen’s commercial manufacturing capacity, and boost its payroll from 9 people to as many as 30 over the next year, says CEO Tom Malone. The company is also
GEORGETOWN, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--UFP Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: UFPT), a manufacturer of packaging and specialty component products, today announced the acquisition of E.N. Murray Co. (“ENM”). Founded in 1959 and located in Denver, Colorado, ENM is a full service designer, converter, and distributor of foam plastic products, specializing in technical polyurethane foams. 2008 sales were approximately $13 million.
ARGOS, IND. - Madras Packaging, a manufacturer of plastic bottles and containers, announced today that it will expand its operations here with expectations to create up to 30 jobs by the end of 2012.
The company, which produces dairy, industrial, household chemical and personal care bottles, will begin construction this month on a 40,000 square-foot warehouse adjacent to its existing 130,000 square-foot bottle production facility on Dewey Street in Argos. Total investment for the new building and equipment is expected to be $5.8 million over the next three years.
Alpha Inc. said Wednesday the Austria-based company will open its first manufacturing facility in the state in Raeford. The company will invest $7.2 million and create 40 jobs in the next three years.
The new employees will create plastic bottles for shampoo, conditioners and body wash products.
EVANSVILLE, IN (WFIE) - An odd source of funding will help Berry Plastics buy millions of dollars in equipment.
The state of Indiana received disaster recovery funds to spur job creation.
Rio Tinto is selling its Alcan Packaging Food Americas division to Bemis Company for $US1.2 billion, of which $US200 million may be in the form of shares in Bemis. The operations include 23 facilities in the US, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and New Zealand.
Recycling industry representatives suggest that the tide is turning, with export demand building up slowly and domestic demand finally stabilizing. And unlike other sectors of the economy, most recycling companies seem to have weathered the rough times and stayed in business.
Standing in a sparse warehouse in a Plum industrial park, surrounded by stacks of used televisions and computers, Ned Eldridge has a vision for an electronics recycling business that will not only prove profitable, but will end up helping the environment. Eldridge is president of eLoop LLC of Murrysville, which collects used electronic equipment — such as computers, fax machines, cell phones, laser printers and televisions — and tries to keep hazardous materials out of landfills by refurbishing discards for resale, or disassembling them for further processing by other recyclers.
Attendance at this year's NPE09 plastics industry tradeshow in Chicago was down 30% from three years ago to 42,000, but the show's sponsor, the Society of the Plastics Industry, remains optimistic about the tradeshow's relevance to plastics industry businesses.
