July 2006 Issue
July 2006
Features
Featured articles from the latest issue of Plastics Technology
Recycled Resin Prices Heading for a Turnaround
After a spring of soft prices, signs point to firming and possible increases ahead. Housing starts are down, but automotive manufacturing seems to be holding its own. Both markets are big users of recycled plastics. Stronger prices for virgin resins also suggest higher recycled resin prices lie ahead.
Read MoreNPE 2006 News Wrap-Up: Recycling and Scrap Reclaim
NPE was full of new equipment and systems for recapturing valuable in-plant scrap and post-consumer/post-industrial plastic waste. Recovery of PET packaging and film or fiber waste were particular areas of emphasis, as were lots of new granulators, from the world’s biggest to micro-size and even ‘clean-room’ models.
Read More3D Part Inspection Is a Snapshot Away
A non-contact inspection system uses digital photography for accurate three-dimensional measurement of plastic parts.
Read MoreYour Business in Brief - July 2006
Georgia Gulf to Buy Royal GroupGeorgia Gulf Corp. in Atlanta, the third largest PVC producer in North America, agreed in mid-June to buy Royal Group Technologies Ltd., Woodbridge, Ont., a major producer of PVC building products, for $1.6 billion.
Read MoreNPE 2006 News Wrap-Up: Chemicals and Additives
There were new additives for every need at NPE 2006: Make your plastics prettier with new colorants. Make them stronger with new fillers and reinforcements. Make them lighter with foaming agents. Or just make them go away with improved purging agents and biodegradable masterbatches.
Read MoreYour Business Outlook - July 2006
Nearly a year later, the U.S. plastics industry is still feeling the effects of last year’s disastrous hurricane season, but most processors appear to have found ways to manage.
Read MoreIt’s Not All Going Abroad
Plastics processors can’t help wondering what kind of business is “safe” for domestic manufacturers and what will be the next to flee to China, India, or some other lower-cost region of the world.
Read MoreNew Approaches to Structural Foam and Overmolding at SPI Conference
New methods for molding better structural-foam parts and for overmolding incompatible materials won the awards for best technical presentations at April’s 2006 Plastics Parts Innovation Conference of the SPI Alliance of Plastics Processors (APP) in Columbus, Ohio.
Read MorePET Reclaimer Moves Downstream
When Nadim Bahou headed Envipco’s West Coast business of granulating PET bottles through “reverse vending machines” in the early 1990s, he saw there was a shortage of PET grinding capacity in the region.
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