Plastics News by the year: 1990

As Plastics News marks its 25th year of publication, we take a year-by-year look back at some of the events, people and curious coincidences that have shown up its its pages. Check back through the end of the year (not including holidays) to follow along. This year: 1990.

January

Extremely cold weather on the Gulf Coast shuts down virtually all U.S. styrene monomer production and nearly 60 percent of all olefins production. The cold snap saw temperatures along the Gulf drop to as little as 7 degrees.

Ford Motor Co. researches the potential to make truck beds with resin transfer molding. It will be another 10 years until it launches production on a composite truck bed for its Explorer Sport Trac.

February

The Industrial Designers Society of America names Little Tikes' activity gym the “design of the decade.” The rotomolded PE gym was one of 3,000 entries in the competition.

The Space Shuttle Columbia retrieves the Long Duration Exposure Facility from space after it has spent 5 years and nine months in orbit. The passengers on board the craft included various plastic composites to determine how they would stand up to high energy radiation, ultraviolet light, micrometeorites and other objects in space.

March

Europe's EUROMAP announces it will create its own Europe-centric protocol for plastics processing equipment, stopping a move that would have created a global standard.

McDonald's is giving up on expanded polystyrene packaging. “Although some scientific studies indicate that foam packaging is environmentally sound, our customers just don't feel good about it. So we're changing,” says McDonald's President Ed Rensi.

GM begins releasing information about its upcoming Saturn sedan. Plastics will play a big role in the car, says Saturn's director of materials management Alan Perriton, appearing in vertical body panels, interior systems and under the hood. “Injection molding polymers will give us the competitive advantage.” Jerry Gibbs, plant manager for General Motors Corp.'s Saturn's body systems/polymers line.

April

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to revamp its hazardous waste management rules and add 25 substances to its hazardous waste list.

Coca-Cola Co. proposes a tax on virgin resin, with the money from that tax to help finance recycling and recovery efforts, while also encouraging processors to become more efficient and use less plastic.

H.J. Heinz Co. develops a multi-layer PET ketchup bottle that can be recycled. The company said it will bring its “EnviroPET” bottle to the market by the end of 1991.

May

The Society of Plastics Engineers expects to launch its first chapters in Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia by mid-1990. The Soviet Union has also expressed interest in forming an SPE chapter. Czechoslovakia split into two countries — the Czech Republic and Slovakia — in 1993. The USSR dissolved in December 1991.

Monsanto Chemical Co. and Exxon Chemical Co. merge their thermoplastic elastomer businesses, worth more than $100 million.

June

McDonald's Restaurants of Canada Ltd. have a setback to its proposal to turn plastic waste into park benches when a plastic lumber maker cancels the deal. Superwood Ontario Ltd. says it had stored more than 16 tons of McDonald's waste before walking away.

Phillips 66 Co.'s Advanced Composites Center says it has come up with a new technology to produce something called a snowboard, a “combination ski and surfboard.” Past snowboards were made with a wood or foam core, then finished with a hand lay-up process. Phillips engineers developed a polyolefin-based core for a board that can be made in one process.

A national survey says that the majority of consumers favor taxing or banning disposable diapers. At least 20 states are considering taxes or bans, due to concerns that the diapers with polyethylene liners are clogging landfills.

Stratasys Inc. introduces a 3-D modeling system that can produce a part from wax or plastic called “fused deposition modeling.”

July

Entrepreneur John J. Cafaro announces he is bringing the Avanti car back on the market, this time using composites rather than the metal panels made by Studebaker for the original Avanti. The car will be made in Youngstown, Ohio, he says, but the company makes only 90 vehicles before shutting down in 1991

Nypro Inc. tackles some ambitious global expansions, with a new plant set for the Soviet Union and a base in Asia in Singapore. The key to keeping the vast expansion in order, it says, is an extensive computer network that will tie together those operations within 18 months.

Plastics News' first ranking of injection molders shows United Technologies Automotive at the top of the mountain. The company wasn't even a major plastics player even five years earlier, but grew to $580 million in injection molding sales through acquisitions. The company will fade away from the rankings as it sells out to Lear Corp. in 1999. Then Lear will roll the bulk of its plastics holdings into International Automotive Components. IAC North America came in second in the 2013 rankings, with nearly $1.6 billion in sales. The only holdover name in the top five from 1990 to 2013? Magna International Inc. The bulk of its plastics were then under the operating name Decoma International, which was ranked fourth in 1990 with $156.9 million in sales. For 2013, it was ranked at the top with an estimated $1.8 billion in sales.

August

Molders are taking some mold making off shore, typically to low cost areas in Portugal and Taiwan. One molder says he prefers Portugal, but said Taiwan is improving.

The plastics industry says it is in a race to find and train new employees. Industry leaders say the problem is a declining birthrate, which means there are fewer workers available, a declining education level for trained skills and a poor image for plastics processing.

The two major players in a legal battle over gas-assisted injection molding — GAIN Technologies Inc. and Cinpres Ltd. — may have reached an agreement in Europe, which should clear the way for greater use of the process. The conclusion of the legal issues over the technology will actually continue on for nearly 20 years.

September

The U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf may be drinking a lot of water, but bottled water companies maintain they aren't running low on bottles for U.S. buyers. Perrier Group says it sent 36,000 bottles to the Persian Gulf, but that is a “drop in the bucket” for its production base. Triton Water Co. shipped 100,000 gallons in HDPE containers, but said it would have no problem getting more bottles.

October

Fuji film announces it will begin selling its 35 millimeter film in paper canisters, rather than PE plastic. “Over the last few years, we've heard from trading consumers that they want environmentally friendly products,” the company says. Thanks to the digital revolution, the company wouldn't have those questions of packaging for its film much longer.

One study says the Halloween market is becoming a big one for plastic companies, with sales increasing 20 to 30 percent annually through the 1980s, with plastics used for everything from masks to trick or treating pails to outdoor decorations,

November

Boeing Co. announces it will use carbon fiber composites on the tail of its new 777 jets. The 777 will be the second commercial airline to use carbon fiber developed by Toray Industries Inc. Airbus put it on a vertical stabilizer.

December

Mack Molding Co. is buying competitor Fame Plastics Inc., which will make it the “largest full-service molder of computer and business equipment in the United States” with annual sales of up to $100 million.

Both Coca-Cola and Pepsi announce they will begin using recycled PET in bottles, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned that it will have to sign off on any use of recycled materials in products with food contact.