The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site late yesterday that GE Plastics is for sale. The report, which cited unnamed sources, speculated that the business might fetch $10 billion.

Rumors about GE's plans for its Plastics unit have been floating around for months. Just because it's apparently looking for bidders now is no guarantee that a deal will happen -- GE certainly is not a distressed seller. My guess is that they have a pretty good idea that they'll get a bid that will make a sale attractive. But they wouldn't mind sparking a few competitive bidders to raise the price.

Since GE rotates executives through many of its businesses, most of the company's top executives have experience in the Pittsfield, Mass.-based plastics unit. The most famous, of course, is Jack Welch, the former chairman and CEO who started his career working with fellow plastics Hall of Famer Dan Fox.

Many names will be floated as potential buyers for GE Plastics in the next few weeks. I wouldn't be surprised if some competitors signed on to get a peak at as much of the unit's financial information as they can get. But you have to believe that it's going to be a financial buyer, not a competitor, who has the best chance to own GE Plastics.

And if that's the case, stay tuned: I have a feeling that life under a financial owner is going to be a heck of a lot different for the folks in Pittsfield.

This week, the center of the media universe isn't in Washington, D.C., despite all the buzz about Iraq strategy and the Democrat's first 100 hours in power.

No, the real news is coming out of Detroit, where the media is getting a sneak peek at the North American International Auto Show. This really is a global show, and top executives are giving interviews every day, trying to but their best spin on the state of their companies.

But the real stars aren't the CEOs. They're interesting, but usually pretty guarded. I'm much more excited about seeing, and reading about, all the new concept cars at the show.

Our sister paper Automotive News has an interesting case history today about one of the featured cars, the Jeep Trailhawk. Make sure to check out the photo gallery!

For those of you who aren't subscribers to Automotive News, here's a link to the Trailhawk on Jeep's Web site.

The International Herald Tribune also has some Auto Show stories on its Web site today. One talks about how the auto industry is changing, highlighting how Chinese automakers are getting more attention this year.

Chanfeng Motor, for example, has an exhibit this year, and the story quotes Jeremy Anwyl, president of Edmunds.com, predicting that "Chinese manufacturers would move more quickly into the American market than their Japanese or Korean counterparts did, once they find dealers to carry their cars. 'This is an indicator of what's to come,' he said."

Rhoda Miel, Plastics News' reporter in Detroit, is busy collecting all the plastics-relevant news at the show, and she had a slightly different take on the topic:

I attended the Changfeng event. (So dull that I saw a reporter who fell asleep.) No big news for us at this point. And the mainstream automakers don't need to worry about the Chinese concept cars at this point. The concept car Changfeng showed had bamboo and fake fur in the interior.

Sounds like the Yugo might be a step up in quality!

Milwaukee, Wis., a beautiful city that has a reputation for is breweries, German heritage and Laverne & Shirley, is seeing a surge in interest in Mandarin Chinese language classes, according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

In Milwaukee, the School of Languages added Chinese as a partial immersion program this school year. The Marshall Montessori International Baccalaureate High School is starting to build a Mandarin program. When the Milwaukee Academy of Chinese Languages opens in the fall, students as young as 4 will have at least a half-hour of Chinese-language instruction daily.

The story calls Mandarin "a new skill for the 21st century," and notes that 30,000 to 50,000 U.S. students currently are enrolled in Mandarin classes, up from just 5,000 in 2000.

In China, however, an estimated 200 million students are learning English.

Next week's Plastics News (the Jan. 15 issue) will editorialize on what changes might be in store for GE Plastics, if the company is sold. I'm interested in how readers feel about this topic. Here's a sneak peek at some of the ideas:

The name itself is the first and more obvious. GE Plastics is one of the best known names in the plastics industry, but it would have to change immediately.

If a financial buyer takes over, we'd expect something like Lexan LLC -- why not stick with the company's most famous brand?

But Lexan polycarbonate is a small part of the total company. So a new owner -- at least one without a well known name in the industry already -- might instead choose to start with a clean slate. Any recommendations?

Management training and succession would change, too. We're so used to the way things work at GE now, it's hard to imagine how much this change would mean to the corporate culture.

Cutting corporate ties with General Electric Co. would mean an end to shuffling executives to and from plastics from GE's many unrelated businesses, including medical, lighting, appliances, broadcast -- you get the idea. That's something that has made GE Plastics unique. But it almost certainly would end.

A new owner might be tempted to break up the company. Would you keep the LNP Engineering Plastics business? ABS resins? Structured Products (the sheet and film unit)? Polymerland resin distribution? Polymershapes?

What do you think about these questions? Are there other changes that you expect from GE?

I can't wait to see what our cartoonist, Rich Williams, does with this column. Rich has been a part of Plastics News from the beginning, way back in 1989, and he's a favorite of many readers. I don't know how he comes up with such funny columns about plastics every week. Check out his work here, on our Opinion page.

One of the most frequently misquoted facts about plastics is the supposed relationship between oil prices and resin prices. They're related, of course, but in North America, the price of resin is more closely connected with natural gas.

And the reality, as any economics professor could tell you, is that pricing is determined by supply and demand, not by feedstock prices.

Still, although the connection is not as solid as many in the business press believe, there are many definite disadvantages to high oil prices for the North American plastics industry. And, conversely, when prices appear to be a bargain, like they are now (let's hope not temporarily), it's good news for manufacturers.

U.S. News and World Report has an interesting story about oil prices. The premise is that the supply/demand equation today is is precarious, and while prices are low now, spikes upward are inevitable.

One of the interesting passages has to do with the role that speculators play in driving up costs:

With oil poised to be one of the world's hottest commodities, it was perhaps inevitable that new investors would attempt to cash in. Most observers now agree that speculators are causing the market to react more quickly, and perhaps more dramatically, to fleeting news of political unrest or harsh weather. "Demand from investors who have accumulated large, net long positions in distant oil futures and options is expanding," Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan observed in an October speech on high oil prices. It's not just hedge funds that are roiling the market. Mutual fund and institutional investors also have gotten into the game. Energy analyst Katherine Spector at JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimates that money from this "passive investor class" has increased from $10 billion to perhaps $30 billion to $40 billion in just a couple of years. "Supply and demand determine the price, but the path we take to get there is increasingly influenced by speculative interest," says Spector. "That accounts for some of the peaks or troughs we've seen."

Traditionally, speculators take on a lot of risk when they trade commodities like oil, and they play an important role in the economy. But is the part they play in energy pricing becoming too important?

The new Democrat-majority Congress is likely to try to raise minimum wages very soon, and I wonder how a change might hurt (or help) manufacturing companies like plastics processors.

The traditional wisdom is that a hike would hurt manufacturers because, even if they already pay more than the minimum, they will feel pressure to boost pay in order to compete with service industry employers. Eventually, that could result in fewer jobs, because manufacturers will automate, or companies will move production to cheaper locales.

Participants in our recent Web poll at PlasticsNews.com, however, didn't seem to think so. Allan Griff, a Bethesda, Md., consultant and one my favorite letter writers to Plastics News, had this to say about the issue:

Raising the minimum wage will not hurt us, but not just for the reason you gave. Raising the minimum wage will put more money in the hands of workers, who will use it to buy things (our products) rather than invest or save (good things in themselves, but not direct stimulants to the use of plastic products). We would do well, in general, to ask where money is going, and not just to squeal every time our pockets are raided, be it by taxes, wages or military budgets. In many cases, such as this one, much of that money comes right back around again.

For more on the topic of minimum wages, here's an interesting story that's on the Christian Science Monitor's Web site today.

Our sister newspaper Automotive News has a report on its Web site that Frank Macher, chief executive officer of Collins & Aikman Corp., is "on the verge of resigning." The story is attributed to sources close to the company.

Macher, a 30-year veteran of Ford Motor Co., came to C&A in July 2005, just after the company filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors.

Southfield, Mich.-based C&A is the No. 1 North American injection molder, ranked by sales, in our annual survey. The company has 20 injection molding plants, an estimated 560 presses, and estimated molding sales of $1.5 billion.

The Automotive News story recalls how Macher "got into a high-profile spat" with Ford last year, when C&A briefly interrupted parts shipments for one shift to Ford's Fusion sedan plant in Hermosillo, Mexico.

Collins & Aikman spokesman David Youngman said Macher has not resigned. Youngman declined further comment. Macher could not be reached for comment.

Here's a story we knew was coming. The amazing part is that it took this long.

Guide Corp., once a major supplier to General Motors Corp., shut down on Friday. Injection molding equipment in the Anderson, Ind., plant will be auctioned on March 13, according to the Indianapolis Star story. A plant in Monroe, La., also closed.

GM pulled nearly all of its business from Guide two years ago. Our story at the time said the move would probably doom Guide, but that its owner, B.N. Bahadur, was looking for a buyer.

In our 2004 ranking, Guide was North America's 12th-largest injection molder with $428 million in related sales and an estimated 300 injection presses.

For you history buffs, Guide dates all the way back to 1906, when it was a motor vehicle lamp repair shop known as Guide Motor Lamp Co. When GM owned the business, it was known as Delphi Lighting.

If there was any doubt at all (and there really wasn't), General Electric Co.'s earnings announcement today confirms that GE Plastics is for sale. Or, as the company says, "We continue to exit slower growth and more volatile businesses, and we are currently reviewing the potential disposition of our Plastics business.

So let the bidding begin!

According to the report, GE Plastics reported sales of $1.64 billion for the three month period that ended Dec. 31, basically flat from the same period a year ago. But profit for the unit was $114 million, down a whopping 44 percent.

When Alan Mulally was named chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co., we speculated that he might be able to use some of the tricks that worked at his former employer, Boeing Co., to turn around things at Ford.

One of Boeing's big success stories is the new Dreamliner aircraft, which makes extensive use of plastic composites. The spacious, lightweight aircraft is more fuel efficient than its competitors, which seemed to us like just the type of advantage that Ford needed too.

The Detroit Free Press has picked up on the story in today's issue, with a nice story headlined "One word for autos: Plastics."

The story asks, can Mulally and others in the auto industry make similar gains with vehicles as Boeing did with the Dreamliner? The answer, as we all know, is yes.

At a time when foreign oil dependence is seen as both an economic and a national security issue, advocates say high-tech plastics can be used all the way down to the traditionally steel frame -- resulting in a family sedan that can average at least 60 miles per gallon.

"It's like finding a Saudi Arabia under Detroit. That's a business opportunity. Whoever gets there first, whether it's American or the Asian automakers, is going to own the industry," said Amory Lovins, the head of an energy research center and designer of a car made of reinforced plastics.

It might take action in Washington to really get things going, in the form of long-overdue stricter fuel economy regulations.

The Kansas City Star's Web site today has a good feature story on Dollins Tool Inc., a medium-sized toolmaker in Independence, Mo. The company makes injection molds for thin-wall products like promotional cups. It's a nice story, and it does a pretty good job explaining exactly what Dollins does, which is not always the case with most daily newspapers.

But the story has a fatal flaw. It features a prominent reference to "The Graduate":

Dustin Hoffman’s character in the 1967 movie “The Graduate” was given one word of advice about his future: plastics.

Long before that movie was made, Dollins Tool Inc. in Independence also saw a bright future in plastics. The company manufactures highly specialized injection molds, which do exactly what their name implies. Liquid plastic is poured into the molds to create any number of items.

Help! I guess news reporters of a certain age just can't help but think that references to "The Graduate" are clever. But this is the biggest cliché in the plastics industry. Please help put an end to this trend! Whenever a local news reporter visits to write a story about your company, please make them promise not to use "The Graduate" references in their story!

The top worry among water experts is rusty pipes, a fact that is in the news today, possibly to the benefit of plastic pipe extruders.

The Reuters news service today has a story headlined "Biggest threat to U.S drinking water? Rust." The story points out that U.S. municipalities spend more than $50 billion each year cleaning water to make it safe and drinkable, then end up distributing it through a system of leaky, corroding iron pipe laid under city streets 50-100 years ago.

"If you clean up water and then put it into a dirty pipe, there's not much point," said Timothy Ford, a microbiologist and water research scientist with Montana State University.

"I consider the distribution system to be the highest risk and the greatest problem we are going to be facing in the future," Ford said.

The story also quotes a National Research Council report, prepared for the Environmental Protection Agency, that concluded: "Investigations conducted in the last five years suggest that a substantial proportion of waterborne disease outbreaks, both microbial and chemical, is attributable to problems within distribution systems."

Plastics News has editorialized on this problem, too, pointing out that nearly 6 billion gallons of water is lost every day from corroded or damaged pipe in the United States -- an incredible waste of money and resources that taxpayers don't know about.

Plastic pipe makers can benefit from the attention to the problem. It's noteworthy that readers of the Yahoo news pages today currently have the "Rust" story on their Top 10 list of "most recommended" news stories.

Green building is a huge trend in the construction industry. It's a complicated issue, and deciding whether a product is "green" is a subjective exercise. But plastics apparently played a key role in one recent success story: BASF Corp.'s Near-Zero Energy Home in Paterson, N.J., earned a platinum score from the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED-H rating system.

According to BASF, that makes the model home the first single-family residence on the East Coast and only the second in the United States to earn this prestigious certification.

Jack Armstrong, manager of construction industry sector for BASF, cited BASF's expandable polystyrene, polyurethane foam sealants, and cool metal roof coatings as the BASF ingredients that optimize the home's performance.

This year BASF plans to donate the home to St. Michael's Housing Authority, which will turn it over to a deserving family.

The Associated Press today has a story online about how firearm manufacturer Smith & Wesson Corp. is adjusting to changes in the gun market.

I didn't realize this, but an important part of the new philosophy appears to involve plastics.

As the story states, Smith & Wesson is known for heavy-duty steel weapons, like the .44 Magnum. But the 155-year-old company had to change when it lost market share to Glock, an Austrian competitor.

Smith & Wesson once had a 98 percent share of the sale of handguns to police departments, but lost much of that when Glock introduced a lightweight polymer pistol in the 1980s.

Last year Smith & Wesson launched its own M&P (Military and Police) line of polymer pistols. The new product is helping: according to the article, the company now has climbed back to claim about 10 percent of the police departments market (compared to Glock's 65 percent).

This is an end market that we haven't written much about, but apparently there are some interesting things happening in the world of plastics and pistols.

The Erie Times-News has a pretty good story about GE Plastics being for sale. The story quotes local plastics processors and John Beaumont, who heads the plastics engineering technology program at Penn State Behrend.

The processors, including Dennis Prischak of Plastek Industries Inc. and Hoop Roche from Erie Plastics Corp., delivered an accurate but hopeful message: the plastics industry is under a lot of competitive pressure, with excess capacity and low profit margins, but there are some nice success stories, too. I think Prischak, Beaumont and Roche did a great job putting the story into the proper perspective.

Roche and Prischak are aiming to ride out the storm and, for the most part that plan seems to be working.

Prischak said he's always looking for ways to add employees. Roche said his company has 500 local employees and continues to replace those who leave.

That hiring represents an act of faith or at least confidence at a time when this and other industries seem to be moving elsewhere. Roche said statistics show 50,000 to 60,000 molding presses are being sold each year in China, compared with 4,000 or less in the United States.

Hoop, by the way, is a fellow plastics blogger. I visit his page regularly, and consider it worthwhile.

The National Association of Manufacturers' shopfloor.org blog today features a story about Stephanie Harkness, chief executive officer of Pacific Plastics & Engineering, a small injection molder in Soquel, Calif.

The item links to a news story by a local ABC TV affiliate about Pacific Plastics, with the peg being that the company is giving customers an alternative to moving their manufacturing offshore.

As NAM's blog points out, not only is Harkness an effective communicator on behalf of U.S. manufacturing, but her plant also is very clean and high-tech looking. This is a good story, and other processors around the country would be smart to try to be spokesmen and spokewomen for plastics and manufacturing with their own local media.

A couple of plastics companies and their executives made headlines in their hometowns this weekend. Both are worth mentioning here.

First, Replex Plastics of Mount Vernon, Ohio, was named Small Business of the Year by the Mount Vernon-Knox County Chamber of Commerce. The company has had an eventful year; a fire in May destroyed the company's thermoforming plant. Fortunately, the firm owned space nearby, and quickly moved into its new home.

According to the Mount Vernon News story about the awards ceremony:

[Replex] not only recovered from the fire but grew. No employee lost a single day’s pay. Using their relationships with their peers and vendors, they borrowed space and equipment to continue to serve their customers.

The other award winner of note is John H. Schroeder, chairman and founder of Crescent Plastics Inc., Cresline Plastic Pipe Co. and Wabash Plastics of Evansville, Ind., who was inducted into the Evansville Business Hall of Fame.

Criteria for selection includes business excellence, courageous thinking and actions, vision and innovation, inspiring leadership, community involvement and actions as role models for future generations.

According to a news release announcing the award, Schroeder was one of the pioneers of the plastics industry that led to Evansville's reputation as a "Plastics Valley." He also is trustee emeritus of the University of Evansville and Wabash College, and director emeritus of Welborn Baptist Hospital.

Congratulations to both Replex and Schroeder for winning some postive headlines for the plastics industry.

The Sioux City Journal in Iowa has a story on its Web site updating progress at the new North American IML Containers injection molding plant in Le Mars, Iowa.

We wrote about the plant in March. The company is part of Groupe Lacroix of Bois d'Amont, France.

According to the story, the company is building a 40,000-square-foot plant to make thin-wall containers with molded-in labels. It expects to employ 27, but for now is operating in a leased plant with 12 workers.

The plant is making containers for Wells' Dairy Inc.'s Blue Bunny-brand ice cream. According to the story, the "personal"-size containers each hold an 8-ounce serving, and the containers are reusable.

Speaking as an ice cream fan, I would like to see Blue Bunny boost that container size by at least 100 percent.

Here is some disappointing news: According to this Miami Herald story that touches on some environmental themes related to this year's Super Bowl, the plastic bottles served at this year's game will not be recycled.

The story quotes Jack Groh, a consultant running the environmental-related aspects of the game for the National Football League.

During Super Bowl XXIX in Miami in 1995, the NFL and Dolphin Stadium started a cardboard recycling program.

''We helped identify the best way to go, the stadium bought a cardboard baler and it's been running ever since,'' Groh said.

This year they were planning to add glass and aluminum beer containers.

``Unfortunately, all the beer now comes in plastic bottles, including our main sponsor, Coors, so we had to abandon that. We're looking at recycling plastics, but it won't happen this year.''

This looks like a missed opportunity for the plastics and recycling sectors, and I don't understand why. The volume of bottles is fairly substantial, it should be pretty easy to get a clean stream of material, and the event is a good opportunity to reinforce to the world media that plastic is recyclable.

Remember the old days, when computers had floppy disk drives?

Well, if your PC or Mac still has one, it might be time for an upgrade, because floppies are getting ready to join 8-track tapes and Betamax movies in the dustbin of relatively recent technology.

According to this story on the BBC News Web site, computing superstore chain PC World has announced that once its current stock of floppies runs out, it will no longer sell the three-and-a-half inch disks.

Floppies were introduced in 1971 by IBM Corp, according to the story, replacing punch cards. They shrunk to their current size in 1981. At their peak, in 1998, an estimated 2 billion were sold. Last year that dropped to 700 million. That number will definitely continue to shrink, since many computers today no longer have floppy drives. They've been replaced by email, the Internet and USB memory sticks.

I'm guessing that old floppies aren't going to be worth much in the future. So I'm not going to keep any in my attic for my yet-to-be-born grandchildren.

The Super Bowl hype machine is running smoothly despite the fact that there's little newsworthy to report from Miami that's actually related to the game (how many stories do we have to read about Peyton Manning's thumb?).

But Chicago's famous Art Institute has saved the day this week, with the saga of the giant plastic football helmets. The museum decided a few weeks ago to commission a new pair of Bears-replica helmets to crown the famous lion sculptures that guard the building's Michigan Avenue main entrance.

The Art Institute's lions last wore Bears' helmets in 1986, when the home team beat the New England Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX. So you have to think the helmets are good luck, right?

Maybe not. This time, the museum decided to go with a cool, more realistic-looking helmet design. But when Chicago Scenic Studios tried to install the helmets on Tuesday, one of them broke.

"We were planning on the flexibility of the plastic to work with us to get those over the mane. Unfortunately, as cold as it was, we had no flexibility, and as soon as we went to pull on it, it cracked," said Gary Heitz, unit manager for the helmet makers.

Never fear, the company took the helmets back to their studio and cut them in half, made them a little bigger and then put them back together.

The good news: the fix worked. Enjoy the video on the project in this story from Chicago's ABC affiliate, Channel 7.