As I've noted before, I'm a news junkie, and I'm always interested in which stories and blog posts are most popular with PlasticsNews.com readers.
So with that in mind, let's take a look at our top stories for the first half of 2016. If you're a regular reader of our website, you know we average about 12 fresh stories every day.
See if you can guess which were the most popular. Keep in mind that our readers love certain things, like M&A and big resin pricing news, and we also get a big boost in readership when we have stories first or, best of all, exclusively.
No. 20 Little Tikes launches custom molding business
No. 19 Americhem buys Michigan compounder Vi-Chem
No. 18 Tesla Model 3's sparse interior may be key to hitting cost, production targets
No. 17 PolyOne buys TPE business from Kraton for $72 million
No. 16 Private equity firm buys MGS Mfg. Group. This was a scoop for Plastics News, we had the news a day before anyone else, including the local newspapers.
No. 15 Novolex acquiring Heritage Bag
No. 14 Using plastic to save trees
No. 13 JM Eagle offers to replace lead pipe in Flint, Mich., for free. We're continuing to cover developments in this story. This was the first in a series of stories. The international media is intensely interested in the Flint water story, and some of our stories have been exclusive reports.
No. 12 Rise of legal marijuana sales opens new packaging markets. It's nice to see strong feature stories in the Top 20 stories list, not just breaking news. If you didn't read this one, go back now and check it out.
No. 11 Private equity firm buys majority stake in Nexeo Solutions for $1.7 billion
No. 10 Dow hits 'Holy Grail' with pouch recycling breakthrough
No. 9 Honeywell spinning off nylon and chemicals business
No. 8 Shell moving forward with Pennsylvania petrochemical complex
No. 7 Evco is Processor of the Year. I enjoy our Processor of the Year videos, too, and this story includes a video of this year's winner.
No. 6 Los Angeles removing shade balls from some reservoirs. Shade balls again! (Readers of my previous top stories blog posts know that stories about shade balls tend to get lots of clicks on PlasticsNews.com.
No. 5 Transilwrap buys Dow Chemical's specialty films business
No. 4 ChemChina buying KraussMaffei for $1.01 billion
No. 3 Polypropylene prices rise in January; PE and PVC decline. Our biggest resin pricing story of the year, so far. Several others just missed the Top 20.
No. 2 Reports say BASF considering bid for DuPont. A story about a deal that never happened.
No. 1 China's Kingfa sets up US compounding base in Michigan
Most-read blog posts
For good measure, here are the Top 5 blog posts for the first half of 2016:
No. 5 Edible six-pack rings? Not so fast!
No. 4 Who's new to our list of Top 100 injection molders?
No. 3 Resin pricing, recycling and survival
No. 2 Why did they destroy 320,000 plastic toy guns?
No. 1 Live blog: 'The Bachelor' shows rotational molding from Step2 visit. A very entertaining blog that appealed both to fans of rotational molding and "The Bachelor." Can you believe Ben didn't pick Caila? It must have been rigged.
So which was most popular, Catherine Kavanaugh's report on Kingfa, or Jeremy Carroll's live blog about "The Bachelor's" visit to Step 2 Co. LLC?
Sorry, Chris Quinn — PN readers liked Kingfa the most. I guess news still trumps entertainment for our readers.