President Obama mentioned SPI member company MGS Mfg. Group (Germantown, Wis.) in a speech given on August 16th after he toured the facilities of ZBB Energy Corporation, an MGS customer also based in Wisconsin. Obama shook hands with MGS Mfg. Group CEO Mark Sellers and used both companies as an example as he urged support for  U.S. manufacturing:

“Because of the steps we’ve taken to strengthen the economy, ZBB received a loan that’s helping to fund an expansion of your operations. Already, it’s allowed ZBB to retain nearly a dozen workers. And over time, the company expects to hire about 80 new workers. This is leading to new business for your suppliers, including MGS Plastics and other manufacturer here in Wisconsin.”

ZBB makes batteries used to store electricity from solar cells and wind turbines.  MGS Mfg. Group, an injection molder and moldmaker, provides complete development services to ZBB, including part and product design, tooling, molding, and other manufacturing solutions.

What is a “processor” in the plastics industry?  According to the eligibility criteria for the Plastics News Processor of the Year Award, which SPI will be co-sponsoring this year, “a processor is a manufacturer that forms finished plastic parts, like a detergent bottle or car bumper fascia.” One European economic development firm describes a plastics processor as a company that “transforms plastic material to obtain a wide range of objects such as toys, bottles, packaging, floor coverings or car parts.” Some of the many processes that plastics processors use in the plastics industry include injection molding, blow molding, extrusion and thermoforming.

SPI’s first-ever Plastics Processors Conference will be held in Irving, Texas, November 16-18, 2010. Now, SPI has hosted conferences for individual types of processors before — such as those that make film and bags, for example, or food, drug and cosmetic packaging, or those that are thermoformers. But this November’s First Annual Plastics Processors Conference in Texas will be a gathering of the tribes of sorts — the first time SPI will bring all processors together to network, share strategies and soak up a groundbreaking program presented by leading plastics experts.

Featuring both business and technical sessions — as well as committee meetings for SPI Processors Council groups —  the conference is open to SPI members and nonmembers and will cover topics such as mergers and acquisitions in the processing industry, resin trends and forecasting, navigating multi-generational workplaces, regulatory compliance and customer assurance, FDA 101, the global future trends of bioplastics and nanotechnology and more.

Keynote speaker Peter Leyden, a future trends expert, will explain how to best utilize emerging technologies to enhance manufacturing productivity and strengthen corporate communications in an age of global transformation.

While plastics processors differ in the vast array of products they manufacture and end-markets they serve, they also share a lot in common — from quality control, environmental performance and regulatory compliance to financial performance, worker training, customer relations and keeping up with technological innovations. Processors have a lot on their plate and need to continually keep up with the latest information and best practices. No doubt, representatives of  these companies will want to find their way to Irving, Texas in November for SPI’s first-ever Processors Conference.

Online conference registration is now open! Both SPI members and nonmembers are encouraged to attend.

Heart stents, a common medical tool used to open clogged arteries and improve blood flow, have traditionally been made of metal and remain in place in the patient permanently. While usually effective, metal stents are not perfect and can sometimes cause problems – including thrombosis or clotting – and are not always the answer for patients with advanced coronary artery disease.

But now Abbott Laboratories – which leads the metal stent market – has developed a new stent they call “Absorb” which is made of a corn-based bioplastic called polylactic acid (PLA). This same material is being used in a number of  other ways, including food packaging, textile fibers and even gift cards.

The stent, coated with a drug called everolimus, is named “Absorb” because, unlike metallic stents, once the vessel can remain open without extra support, the stent is slowly metabolized by the body until it is completely dissolved. Since a permanent implant is not left behind, the vessel ultimately can move, flex and pulsate in a manner similar to an untreated vessel. Officially called “bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS),” the stent takes about 18 months to fully dissolve. According to a Fast Company article, unlike metal stents, “Abbott’s Absorb would… also let cardiologists use noninvasive heart imaging for follow-up care.” 

A March 2010 Abbott press release announced positive news concerning the 101 patients enrolled in the second phase of an Absorb trial. “Patients treated with Abbott’s bioresorbable vascular scaffold (BVS), under clinical investigation in Europe, demonstrated no cases of blood clots (thrombosis), no need for repeat procedures (ischemia-driven target lesion revascularization) and a very low rate of major adverse cardiac events…These results build on the long-term success Abbott has seen with the BVS technology in the first phase of the Absorb trial, which has generated positive data on 30 patients out to three years.”  Results of the study were also published in The Lancet.

While more trials with larger patient populations will be conducted over the next three years before the new stent can win government approval in Europe or the United States, Dr. Patrick Serruys, professor of interventional cardiology at the Thoraxcentre, Erasmus University Hospital, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and principal investigator for the Absorb trial states:

“The continuing positive results of the Absorb trial and the clinical benefits demonstrated to date by Abbott’s bioresorbable technology show promise that a bioresorbable scaffold is on its way to becoming a clinical reality and will be the next revolution in interventional cardiology.”

A revolution in cardiology made possible by a corn-based bioplastic.

How do you move forward, improve and grow while simultaneously defending against unfounded efforts by others to impede those very advancements? That was the nature of the presentations on the second day of SPI’s Flexible Vinyl Products 21st Compounding Conference, as they alternated between  discussions of cutting-edge research, the latest market information and new tools to improve products on one hand, and strategies to negotiate product de-selection initiatives on the other.

Bill Hall, who chairs the environmental law practice at Winston & Strawn, presented a range of measures to employ in order to discourage product de-selection, and reminded attendees of the famous phrase of his former basketball coach, the late great Jim Valvano: “Don’t give up, don’t ever give up.” Hall played basketball under Valvano at Bucknell Univesrsity, prior to Valvano winning the NCAA national championship as the coach of North Carolina State University in a highly memorable last-second upset victory in 1983.

Later in the day, members of the ACC Phthalate Ester Panel exposed several anti-phthalate studies and news reports as myths using a glaring spotlight of reality in the form of government  statistics and common sense conclusions drawn by a variety of independent experts. The panel members also provided a regulatory and legislative update as well as a report on recent media trends.

Bill Carroll spoke to attendees about a few things, including his work as a member of California’s Green Chemistry Initiative Science Advisory Panel. The Green Chemistry program is a highly complex, some might say “convoluted,” process to remove or reduce chemicals deemed hazardous from products sold in California. Carroll, vice president, industry issues for Occidental Chemical Corporation, an an adjunct professor of chemistry at Indiana University, also engaged conference attendees in a discussion about the future of the flexible vinyl industry, asking, “Where will we be in 10 years? Where do we go from here?” The ensuing conversation swung from the need for greater innovation, to the need to be less risk-averse when it comes to investing  financial resources in compelling opportunities, and the possibility of the federal government setting policies that make the United States a friendlier place to do manufacturuing business.

But in addition to sessions on how to deal with negative external challenges, attendees also heard from speakers who brought expertise to the table that would help them do their jobs better and improve their vinyl products. Jim Roberts of BYK-Gardner, for example, spoke about how to best measure color, gloss (the amount of light reflected off a surface), haze, clarity and other physical properties of vinyl and its products. This is particularly important in today’s manufacturing world where one part of a product may be made in the United States as others are being made at other plants around the world. When they come together, they need to be exactly alike. Luckily, as I learned, there are lab and production line tools like the “Micro-Gloss” and “Spectro-Guide.”

Toward the end of the day, industry lion and Lord of the Rings enthusiast Dean Finney, retired from Eastman Chemical Company and now almost set to retire from Rivendell Consultants, paraphrased the Tolkien character Aragorn in addressing his embattled flexible vinyl colleagues: “Success does not belong to one man but to all. Let us together rebuild this world that we may share in the days of peace.”

I’m starting out this week in a world of flexible vinyl. Actually, I’m at the Lansdowne Conference Center in Virginia where the flexible vinyl products world is convening July 11-13 for the preeminent conference for the vinyl industry: SPI’s Flexible Vinyl Products 21st Annual Compounding Conference. Combining business and technical programming, this event has attracted more than 125 attendees who will hear presentations from technical experts conducting cutting-edge research, business leaders providing strategy and market guidance and legislative and regulatory speakers with the latest from the nation’s capital and around the world.

And there’s some breaking news already! I had the opportunity to sit in on the SPI Flexible Vinyl Products Committee‘s  Executive Committee Meeting this morning and a very exciting development came about concerning NPE2012. But more on that below…

This week’s conference is hosted by SPI’s Flexible Vinyl Products Committee (FVPC), part of the association’s Material Suppliers Council. The FVPC works for the benefit of all companies within the flexible vinyl industry regardless of end market application – and, because of the material’s many advantages, that is an enormous amount of applications!  Because flexible vinyl is inexpensive, durable, safe, easily processed and recyclable, it is appealing to product manufacturers and ideally suited to myriad uses.  From construction (such as flooring and roofing) to life-saving medical products (such as blood/intravenous fluid bags, cardiac catheters, endotracheal tubing) to packaging (food wrap, container lids) to wire and cable and a vast variety of automotive uses, flexible vinyl makes modern life better.

Topics to be presented and discussed here in Virginia over the next two days include the latest research on new materials, optimizing product quality using new lab tools, global updates concerning the resin and plasticizer markets, and presentations concerning product de-selection issues and the ways in which science and statistics are used (and sometimes abused) by the media. Rebecca Obniski, a chemistry and music double-major at the College of William and Mary will present a paper on “New Metal-Based Smoke Suppressants and Fire Retardants for Flexible PVC.”  Veteran industry insider William Carroll, vice president for industry issues, Occidental Chemical Company, will reflect on his experiences in the plastics industry and his perspective on the future.  A number of  SPI staff experts will be on hand to deliver the latest news on the legislative front, REACH and Walmart’s retailer sustainability initiatives.

Speaking of news, this morning the FVPC Executive Committee preliminarily signed off on having a pavilion devoted to flexible vinyl products at NPE2012 in Orlando. Similar to successful specialty pavilions staged at NPE2009 that were devoted to fluoropolymers, thermoformers and TPE elastomers,  an “FVP World” pavilion would provide the flexible vinyl products community with a platform to discuss advancements in technology, educate participants and highlight member companies and organizations in a unified and organized format.  “FVP World” would be part of  NPE Technology Central in the Orange County Convention Center’s South Hall.  At this morning’s meeting, SPI President Bill Carteaux brought up this idea to FVPC leadership, saying, “We invite flexible vinyl products companies to host FVP World at NPE2012, and provide this opportunity to your members, suppliers and their customers to see and hear what’s new in flexible vinyl.” Needless to say, the FVPC Executive Committee liked the idea! Stay tuned for more details.