Mexico City — Mexico's plastics industry association is still waiting to hold its first face-to-face meeting with its U.S. and Canadian counterparts to discuss the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement and its impact, if any, on the region's plastics sector.
Representatives of the Mexico City-based Asociación Nacional de Industrias del Plástico AC (Anipac) were scheduled to travel to Washington in April for talks with the Plastics Industry Association and the Canadian Plastics Industry Association before bad weather forced a postponement.
The meeting was re-scheduled for May 16 in Mexico City, but has since been put off until June because of the unavailability of Anipac President Juan Antonio Hernández León, according to Alfonso García Díaz, the association's executive secretary.
Teams led by CEO Bill Carteaux of the plastics association and Carol Hochu, the CPIA's president and CEO, will join Hernández and his team at the talks once a new date is set.
The three associations are expected to hold three or four meetings before reporting back to their respective governments, García said. Hernández told an Anipac assembly on April 25 that the Mexican government and two leading private sector manufacturing organizations designated the association to represent the national plastics industry in negotiations over the future of NAFTA.
Anipac has appointed eight members of a foreign affairs commission to discuss the agreement, backed by an eight-strong, internal Anipac support group.
In February, Eduardo de la Tijera Coeto, who was Anipac's executive secretary at the time, said the country's plastics industry was "not at risk," despite President Donald Trump's threat to renegotiate the terms of NAFTA, in effect since 1994.
De la Tijera died from cancer on May 1, six days after resigning his executive Anipac position and being succeeded by García Díaz.
