Industrial accidents happen every day across China -- the world's factory. But the ways responsible parties and authorities handle them are all different. Take the Nov. 20 explosion at a PVC factory in Shanxi province.

Four died and 39 were injured at the coal-based PVC plant, owned by Yushe Chemical Co. Ltd., a major revenue contributor to coal-rich Yushe County.

The day after the incident, local government held an emergency meeting, ordered a county-wide safety check of all industrial facilities, and made Nov. 20 an annual "safety theme day".

On Nov. 23, the plant manager was suspended to receive further investigation. Yushe Chemical's corporate safety officer was dismissed. Two other company executives as well as a county safety official were given demerits.

Authorities also conducted continuous monitoring of the air and water quality near the explosion site. A special team was formed to handle the compensation for victim families and nearby residents.

The speed and transparency of the measures taken by Yushe Chemical and the local government have become pretty standard in China, but they are still lacking in many smaller, privately owned factories in the plastics industry, as we've seen and reported in the past.

Yushe Chemical is owned by the local government, employs nearly 3,000 and reported sales of 1.39 billion yuan (US$209 million) in the first ten months of 2010.

Commodity analysts at China Futures Co. Ltd. said they don't expect the incident to cause major impact on the PVC resin market. Yushe Chemical claims annual capacity of 400,000 metric tons. China's monthly PVC output reached 953,000 tons in October, most of which through the coal-derived acetylene process.

A bioplastics manufacturer in North China has started building a PLA production base that claims planned annual capacity of 150,000 metric tons. More interestingly, the same company announced a same scale project three years ago, only with a different partner.

This time, Hebei Huadan Complete Biodegradable Plastic Co. Ltd. of Shijiangzhuang, Hebei province, is working with Taiwan's Wei Mon Industry Co. Ltd. to invest 400 million yuan (US$ 60 million) on the large-scale facility that will be making PLA packaging materials and consumer products.

Officials from the Hebei province attended the ground-breaking ceremony on Nov. 19.

Back in 2007, Huadan hosted an equally high-profile signing ceremony for a 150,000-ton PLA project at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The amount of investment was the same, the product line was no different, and the site was in same development zone. But the partner was a little-known investment firm - Hong Kong Tianhao Development Ltd.

It's my speculation that the 2007 project may have fallen through at some point. Huadan reported annual capacity of 50,000 tons last year, compared to 6,000 tons in 2006.

The new partner, Wei Mon Industry, is a reputable company that serves as a distributor for NatureWorks in Taiwan.

Huadan's corporate Web site is under development, but the only information there points to its, yet another, "partner" - MJ Group.

In the database of China's Ministry of Land and Resources, I found a recent record of Huadan purchasing the 50-year use rights of a 13-acre industrial-use land at the reported site with 52.5 million yuan ($7.9 million). The contract was signed on Aug. 27, and the construction of the project was expected to start on Feb. 19, 2001 and finish on Feb.19, 2013.

Hopefully, the ambitious project will complete smoothly this time.

A staggering number of Chinese plastics companies have invested - in one way or another -- in the rocketing real estate sector in that country.They include China's largest compounder, the parent company of the largest injection press maker, and many more.

But now a major one, PVC maker Sichuan Jinlu Group Co. Ltd., has decided to divest its real estate business and concentrate on resin manufacturing.

In a recent announcement, Jinlu said it has signed an agreement to sell its 98.26 percent share of Mianyang Xiaodao Construction and Development Co. Ltd. to Chengdu Shilong Industry Co. Ltd. for about 289 million yuan (US$43 million).

The move will help strengthen its main business, Jinlu said in a statement. Xiaodao's profitability has been on the decline since last December, due to government measures designed to cool the real estate sector.

As China's inflation hits a 28-month high, real estate prices as expected to continue to climb, because consumers are likely to continue to invest in multiple homes to counter inflation.

The growth of China's auto parts market is projected to outpace that of vehicle sales during the next five years, a boon to plastics suppliers serving China's auto sector.

According to a report by the Shanghai Securities, in the first eight months of 2010, domestic auto parts sales topped 1 trillion yuan (US$150 billion), 46 percent higher than a year ago. Industry-wide profit totaled 82 billion yuan (US$12 billion), up 82 percent from the same period of 2009.

Demand for auto plastics compounds rose 19 percent this year, an analyst from KGI Securities said.

Publicly listed Jiangnan Mould & Plastic Technology Co. Ltd., a leading manufacturer of bumpers, recently reported a 37 percent revenue increase in the first three quarters.

Li Yingang, an analyst with Soochow Securities, said the auto parts industry will witness higher growth than automakers in the next five years. Meantime, Chinese auto suppliers will gain global competitiveness.

In fact, China exported US$33 billion of auto parts and components from Jan. to Oct., showing a 44 percent year-over-year boost, based on latest data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers.

China is the world's largest auto manufacturer and the largest new vehicle market. Auto sales are likely to beat previous forecast and reach 18 million units this year, CAAM said this week.

China's plastic processors are trying to get their share in the booming auto parts market. PVC film manufacturer Foshan Tian'an Plastic Co. Ltd. is doing just that by building an auto part plant in Guangdong province.

The 11-year-old firm will invest 150 million yuan (US$22.5 million) in the new factory, which is expected to start making interior trim products in 2012. The company sets the 2014 sales goal for the new factory at 1 billion yuan (US$150.2 million), according to a report from Chinese media New Express.

The privately owned company claims 500 million yuan (US$75.1) of annual output and 800 employees in its existing operation.

It aims to secure venture capital investment in the first part of 2011, and also hopes to launch an IPO within two years.

Tian'an said it started to tackle the auto market in 2009, when it signed a partnership agreement with Japan's Okamoto Corp. Okamoto supplies such products as blended PVC foam, TPO foam, PVC/Urethane foam, PVC coated fabric to Japanese automakers.

Automakers in China still import a large amount of interior parts from overseas, which Tian'an sees as a great opportunity for local manufacturing of higher-end products.

In order to compete with more established global suppliers, company officials told Chinese media plans to strengthen its R&D by hiring international experts and postdoctoral researchers.

Half of the world's toys are still made in China's Guangdong province, but toymakers there have been complaining about razor-thin profit margins for a while. Some of them are exploring new product categories. Dongguan Jian Sheng Industrial Co. Ltd., for instance, is now making LED light fixtures.

The injection molder has downsized its toy division from more than 5,000 employees at peak time to a few hundred workers right, according to a recent feature story by First Financial Daily.

Chairman Li Weijian said he made the reduction in spite of growing market demand. Costs are creeping up, and he just couldn't find an effective way to ensure profitability.

Li said he started the toy business in 1989 and claims big-name customers including Mattel, Wal Mart, Disney and KFC.

For a while, the company thrived with the scale of production. However, thanks to fluctuating raw material prices, continuous wage hikes, and the strengthening Chinese currency, the risk associated with large-scale, low-margin manufacturing outweighs the reward.

Other challenges include trade barrier and stricter product safety measures by North America and Europe, he said.

A personal experience -- his old friend and toy factory head, Zhang Shuhong, committed suicide during Mattel's massive toy recall in 2007 - also made Li rethink about the toy business.

During the past year, his factory has built 800,000 square meters of manufacturing space for light fixture production and annual production capacity of 1 billion yuan worth of products, Li said.

He sees a great future for exporting energy-saving lamps and a good opportunity to finally build his own brand after decades of custom molding. He believes it's easier to build a brand in a new and fast-growing product category, which the toy business is anything but.