Lavoie to step down after CPIA restructuring The Canadian Plastics Industry Association's president and CEO, Serge Lavoie, will be leaving the position at the start of 2009. He told the CPIA's annual general meeting on Wednesday that he felt it was time to make this move, after being at the helm for more than five years.
"The time was right," he said, noting that he lives apart from his family in another part of Ontario for most of the week. "It's time for me to go home and change gears." However, he intends to oversee the restructuring CPIA is about to undergo, before leaving.
"It will be a massive restructuring this time," he told he AGM. "What you will see is something completely different to what you have known before."
CPIA has not filled the regional director's position in Quebec, which has been vacant for several months, and it is not yet settled what is to happen in the province in future. After the headquarters operation in Mississauga, Ont., the Montreal office has CPIA's largest staff grouping. However, Lavoie stressed that all commitments in Quebec through 2008 will be honoured, including the Expoplast 2008 trade show in Montreal, and the APAC conference that follows it.
Funding has been a key issue for CPIA, as it has for other industry groups. There has been no real growth in membership in recent years. At the same time, environmental issues have come to dominate the association's agenda, and fighting proposed bans on certain substances, plastic bags and disposable packaging is taking up increasing amounts of time, effort and cash. The association's chairman, Dave Birkby, president of Westbridge PET Containers (Calgary), told the meeting the CPIA has had to cut what it can do as the industry goes through its adjustment to a changed business environment.
"We hope to report more about the restructuring in July," he said, "after our annual board meeting." www.cpia.ca
CPIA president Serge Lavoie announces his 2009 departure.
Spending now to profit in the recovery Business is slow, and might be about to get slower. What to do? Invest, says Bill Empey.
Empey is head of Prism Economics (Toronto), and told the Canadian Plastics Industry Association's ‘town hall meeting' last week that this is the time to look at buying new equipment.
"Now is the time to invest in plastics processing in Canada," he said. "Catch the cycle for product delivery in 2010. By then, the industry will be in recovery, and will offer opportunities for investments that are made now to flourish. It's a good time to invest because machinery and equipment costs are low. Capital cost allowances are increased, equity prices are low and interest rates are down."
Plastics, he pointed out, is a bellwether industry, entering into slowdowns earlier than other areas of manufacturing, and coming out of them sooner. He predicted the US will begin to recover once it gets past the middle of 2008. And despite gloomy predictions, there is still no hard evidence its economy is in a recession, just a period of slower growth.
"A significant recovery can be expected in transportation equipment, and plastic packaging should be growing at six per cent this year," he said. "While we have lost market share comparatively, we still ship 20 per cent more plastics to the US each year than China does.
"But recruiting, retaining and training the workforce is imperative. Canadian producers will have limited recovery prospects without an investment strategy." www.cpia.ca
Bill Empey
Ontario liquor board backs PET containers While plastic packaging is under fire in many quarters, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario is opting for more PET bottles. It is encouraging its suppliers to switch from glass to PET and Tetra-Brik aseptic containers as an environmentally preferable packaging medium.
Artisan Wine Co., based in BC's Okanagan Valley, has just listed a PET-bottled wine called Painted Turtle. Ball Corp. in the US is supplying the 750-ml bottle, which has a screw-top closure and uses barrier coating technology developed by the German company Plasmax. This employs low-vacuum plasma-based technology to apply a non-reactive glass-like silica-oxide coating on the internal surface of the PET bottle prior to filling.
Ball has been supplying 187ml Plasmax coated wine bottles for the US market since 2006 using its Plasmax 12D coating system. However, Artisan Wine is the first to take a standard 750ml bottle from the company.
Artisan's decision to use PET follows the decision of the LCBO to designate PET as a "preferred packaging" option for wines. A PET wine bottle weighs less than one-tenth of the weight of a conventional glass bottle, resulting in considerable reduction in greenhouse emissions. www.lcbo.com
Green pressures mount across Canada
It's no secret that environmental issues are on the front burner for the plastics industry. The Environment & Plastics Industry Council of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association now accounts for the majority of CPIA's expenditures, and there's no sign the pressure will let up soon.
Cathy Cirko, vice-president of environment and health with CPIA, told a CPIA ‘town hall meeting' last week that Ontario in particular is subject to "a well conceived and coordinated NGO strategy to challenge the credibility of industry science. They also want to undermine confidence in the federal system."
The bad blood between Ontario and the federal government is a factor here, and Ottawa rushed out its finding on BPA – which actually said BPA levels are within safety limits – to forestall Ontario's own planned BPA announcement.
All levels of government, she added, want to be regulators, which accounts for the outbreak of proposals for bans on plastic bags across Canada. To date, 37 proposed bag bans and 16 proposed bag taxes have been defeated, with two municipalities implementing bans and five more having proposals now pending.
In particular, Cirko warned, "Toronto does not understand environmental and economic ramifications. It wants to set an example for Canada. It is not sensitive to business operations and needs." There is a huge movement, she added, that says packaging is unnecessary, and there are easily 500 blogs with anti-plastic packaging themes. The intent, to make consumers feel guilty, is proving effective.
"Since the federal government announced its planned ban on polycarbonate baby bottles," she added, "the public is increasingly confused. People think BPA is in every plastic they use. The Toronto Star even had an article on May 20 referring to BPA being in PVC, which is nonsense."
A further issue is that there is finger-pointing within the industry, with different sectors saying another sector's problem is not theirs.
"We are facing a political climate in chaos," she said. "And it's going to get worse when the federal Health Ministry starts releasing its findings on other chemicals."
EPIC plans a Mid-June call to action on industry strategy. An option it is promoting is the Australian stewardship concept, which seems to have forestalled some of the measures Canada is now facing. www.plastics.ca
Have you updated your listing in Plastics in Canada's Source Book?
This annual directory of the plastics industry is compiled during May, and you should already have had a form mailed out to you. If you've not seen yours, or need to make further changes to your listing, simply go to www.plasticsincanada.com, and click on the Update/Add Listing button on the right.
PLEASE NOTE: we make every effort to keep the Source Book a useful and relevant manual for the industry. This means that every year, we delete listings that have not been updated in the previous 24 months. So, it's advisable to check your listing anyway, to be sure it's up to date, and not at risk of being eliminated.
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Changes
Unique Blowmoulding Inc. (Concord, Ont.) is a new processor that has just opened. Don Seaton, former president of T & S Blowmoulding Inc. has started the extrusion blow moulding company following T & S' bankruptcy early in May. The failed company had been in business since the 1970s, but was forced to close as the high Canadian dollar made its products uneconomical for US customers. www.tsblowmoulding.com
Carlo Gavazzi (Canada) Inc. (Mississauga, Ont.) has appointed Duncan Curd vice-president of sales. He will be responsible for the continued expansion of Carlo Gavazzi's automation and controls business in the Canadian marketplace. He has over 25 years experience within the automation and controls industry in both sales and marketing management functions, and most recently managed the automation business unit of Siemens Canada. www.gavazzionline.com
Duncan Curd
JER Envirotech International Corp. (Delta, BC) plans to open a US production facility in Greenville, SC by late 2009. The company's US sales of biocomposite products are expanding, and this will help it ship product more economically. www.jerenvirotech.com
Husky Injection Molding Systems (Bolton, Ont.) has won another round in its long legal battle with Mold & Hotrunner Technology. It
previously
won $1-million in damages in 2006 from a German court, and recently, the German Supreme Court rejected a request from MHT to allow an appeal of this decision. The Court found the damages already granted in favour of Husky comply with German law, and that the Bolton, Ont., firm had been compelled to take legal action against MHT for theft of its preform mould design engineering. MHT is a German company founded by former Husky employees that makes preform moulds and competes directly against Husky. www.husky.ca
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June 1: Canadian Association of Mold Makers golf tournament, at Fox Glen Golf and Country Club, in McGregor, Ont. (Contact Mike Hicks at 519-737-6743 or mikeh@dmscomponents.com).
June 3: Canadian Tooling and Machining Association's 10th Annual Shotgun Golf Tournament, at Pine Knot Golf & Country Club in Dorchester, Ont. (Contact CTMA at 519-653-7265 or info@ctma.com).
June 5: Canadian Plastics Pioneers 12th annual reunion and citation awards dinner. At the Donalda Club, Don Mills, Ont. (Contact: Tom Thomas at 416-498-4016 or tom.thomas@rogers.com)
June 11: 2008 CPIA Alberta Golf Classic, at Innisfail Golf Club (Contact: Hilary Sturdevant at 905-678-7748 or hsturdevant@cpia.ca).
June 12: Quebec section of SPE, annual golf tournament at Club de golf La Madeleine, in Ste-Madeleine, Que. (Contact: Michel M. Vinette, at 819-758-2692 or mvinette@americanpolymers.com)
June 16: Canadian Association of Mold Makers dinner meeting, in Windsor, Ont. (Contact: Diane Deslippe at 519 255-7863 or info@camm.ca).
June 20: SPE Ontario golf tournament, at Station Creek Golf Course. (Contact: Andrew Marshall at 416-781-5286 or amarshall@ontor.com).
June 20-21: International Association of Plastics Distribution Canadian conference. At Marriott Niagara Falls Hotel. (Contact: 913.345.1005 or iapd@iapd.org)
August 28: Canadian Plastics Industry Association's annual golf classic, at Cardinal Golf Club, Kettleby, Ont. (Contact Erin Cimino at 905-678-7748 or ecimino@cpia.ca).
September 4: Canadian Plastics Pioneers Eighth Annual Golf Tournament, at Richmond Hill Golf Club, Richmond Hill, Ont. (Contact: Peter Stephen at 905-940-5577 or pstephen@stephensales.com)
September 30-October 2: Interplas 2008, Britain's national plastics show, at the Birmingham NEC, UK. (Contact: Graham Earl at 020 8910 7890 or graham.earl@reedexpo.co.uk).
October 22-23: Rotoplas '08, the international rotational moulding event, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont, Ill. (Contact: Maria at 630-578-3266 x225, or mariap@cmservnet.com)
October 20-21: Expoplast 2008, Quebec's triennial plastics show, at the Palais de Congres in Montreal. (Contact: Tom Sockett at 905-678-7748 or tsockett@cpia.ca)
October 22: APAC international business development conference, at the Palais de Congres in Montreal. (Contact: Tom Sockett at 905-678-7748 or tsockett@cpia.ca)
October 22-23: Rotoplas '08, the international rotational moulding event, at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center, Rosemont, Ill. (Contact: Maria at 630-578-3266 x225, or mariap@cmservnet.com)
Coming Soon From Plastics In Canada Magazine - September issue:
Special supplement – Expoplast 2008 show preview
Plastics in automotive safety systems
Measuring – what's happening in monitoring size, colour, dimensions and efficiency
Product Spotlight on Controls
Blow moulding report – New machine designs for blow moulding
Raw materials report – Innovations in resin technology, fillers and additives
Troubleshooting – Our regular look at what can go wrong, and how to be sure it doesn't
Processor profile – A visit to an innovative moulder, extruder or other manufacturer of finished plastic items
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