Plastics News by the year: 2013, 2014

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. We wrap things up today with a look back at 2013 and 2014.

JANUARY

Personal care products company Unilever NV vows to phase out plastic microbeads from its products following a call from environmental groups to eliminate the “scrub” material.

General Motors Inc.'s new Chevrolet Corvette comes decked out with a carbon fiber composite hood and roof.

PN gets a new look with an updated logo and revamped website.

FEBRUARY

A two-armed robot named Baxter is installed at custom injection molder Rodon Group LLC. Baxter sports animated eyes and sensors to interact with workers.

MARCH

Lawmakers in California, Rhode Island and Hawaii introduce legislation that, if passed, would make them the first states to ban plastic bags statewide.

The iconic red cup gets a makeover in Red Cup Living LLC's line of sturdy, reusable ABS drinkware.

APRIL

For the first time in history, China's exports of injection presses made in China exceeded imports, with the country sending nearly $1 billion worth of molding machines abroad.

The American Chemistry Council sues to prevent California from including bisphenol A on its list of reproductive and developmental toxicants.

MAY

Attention is drawn to 3-D printing after a Texas law student prints a plastic gun.

China cracks down on contaminated scrap imports with heightened inspection procedures, causing confusion and delays for plastic exporters.

JUNE

The iconic chasing-arrows symbol in the Resin Identification Code is replaced by a solid equilateral triangle, in an effort to alleviate confusion over the symbol's meaning.

After being held hostage for six days in his Beijing injection molding factory, U.S. business executive Chip Starnes was released when his company Specialty Medical Supplies paid $500,000 to settle a dispute about severance pay prompted by plans to move the plastic molding division to Mumbai, India. Starnes said he had to buy his freedom: “It was a complete shakedown.”

JULY

PolyOne Corp. said it would close six of the plants it had recently acquired as part of its $393 million purchase of Spartech Corp. The closings, which were expected to be completed by the end of 2014, were projected to result in 250 jobs lost and $25 million a year in savings.

AUGUST

Talk about a product launch. NASA announced plans to send the world's first zero-gravity capable first 3-D printer into space so astronauts could make tools and other objects from ABS and advanced thermoplastics. That's one big leap for extrusion additive manufacturing.

Google Inc. tests software it developed to control a fleet of polyethylene film balloons made by Raven Industries Inc. as a way to supply Internet service to remote areas of New Zealand. In the first trial, 30 balloons helped provide Internet access to an area covering roughly 3,800 square miles.

SEPTEMBER

McDonald's Corp. announced it was switching from polystyrene foam cups to paper for hot beverages at its more than 14,000 U.S. restaurants as well as its major markets outside the country.

Industrial conglomerate Koch Industries Inc. acquired Molex Inc. and its 41 manufacturing sites, where many plastic-based connectors, sockets and cable assemblies are made, for $7.2 billion, striking the biggest deal of 2013.

NOVEMBER

A federal jury found J-M Manufacturing Co. – now known as JM Eagle -- violated the False Claims Act by falsely representing that the plastic pipes it sold to government entities from 1996-2006 met industry standards. Calling the verdict a miscarriage of justice, the world's largest PVC pipe maker has asked for a new trial, raising issues of jury instruction and what it says were distortions of industry standards.

Berry Plastics Group said it would close five plants and eliminate 200 jobs to cut operating costs by about $27 million but it would invest $100 million in its Madisonville, Ky., facility to produce its new Versalite line of beverage cups, which are made of polypropylene.

DECEMBER

The mold-making business of two brothers from Chicago, Feng Ping Tooling & Plastics Mfg. Co. Ltd. in Dongguan, China, closed abruptly and filed for bankruptcy on Dec. 16 amidst allegations of employees embezzling $4.5 million. More than 200 workers then refused to leave their factory dormitories in a dispute over back wages. A week later dozens were arrested for blocking a Wal-Mart store to call attention to their demands for severance pay.

2014

JANUARY

Will orange be the new black? Ford Motor Co. unveiled the 2015 model of its iconic F-150 pickup truck featuring not only extensive use of aluminum throughout the body to make it 700 pounds lighter but a distinctive new design feature: orange light pipe made of polycarbonate around the headlights and taillights.

FEBRUARY

Car maker Aston Martin recalled 17,590 vehicles after a Chinese pedal supplier used counterfeit material instead of the specified DuPont Co.'s nylon 6.

A new fleet of bobsleds designed by BMW AG and made of carbon fiber carried Team USA to its first Olympic medal in the two-man race since 1952 during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

APRIL

PolyOne stopped production of Royalex sheet — a custom thermoformed plastic used to make about 50 models of canoe hulls — sending the paddle sport community on a nostalgic buying spree. Royalex was an unprofitable product for the company and no other growth opportunities could be identified for the ABS material popular because of its shock absorption, abrasion resistance and buoyancy.

MAY

Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics and China-based Haitian International Holdings suspended their operations in Vietnam because of widespread anti-Chinese rioting that included mob attacks on Formosa factories. Rioters targeted foreign companies during a political dispute between Vietnam and China over maritime boundaries.

The New York State Assembly voted 108-0 to ban microbeads used in personal care products like soaps and facial scrubs because the tiny polyethylene balls were slipping through screens at water treatment plants and getting into the Great Lakes. An environmental group found 600,000 microbeads per square kilometer in two samples taken from Lake Erie. California lawmakers passed similar legislation a couple weeks later and Illinois took up bills.

JUNE

Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of Kevlar and the only woman ever inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame, died June 18 at age 90. Her innovation led to bullet-proof vests. She left behind a legacy of more than 3,100 lives saved in law enforcement and countless others in the military.

AUGUST

Waste Management Inc. closed its innovative waste-plastics-to-oil plant in Oregon, saying it had learned all it could from the facility and would evaluate retrofitting it with the next generation of technology.

SEPTEMBER

Dunkin' Donuts, America's largest retailer of coffee by the cup, began testing a polypropylene cup made by Berry Plastics in several of its markets as it searches for a material to replace polystyrene foam cups. The foam cups can't be recycled in most municipal recycling programs.

OCTOBER

Badlands NGL LCC announced the largest-ever private investment for the state of North Dakota: a $4 billion polyethylene plant that will use the ethane byproduct of oil production as a feedstock. The state, like nowhere else in the country, is being transformed by the shale oil and gas boom.

NOVEMBER

Plastics News' first survey of blow molders finds that business is in a strong growth mold, but companies worry about attracting and recruiting employees to keep up with that growth.

Plastics News celebrates its 25^th anniversary.

Little green army men and the Rubik's Cube are voted into the National Toy Hall of Fame.

DECEMBER

Shortages of the high-performance resin polyetherimide — made by Sabic Innovative Plastics under the Ultem name — could affect molders for months.