Holiday toy program saved by resin donations

It's a holiday tradition dating back to 1999. And for a short time in October, Dawn Cooper thought it wasn't happening this year.

Cooper, who works in sales and product development for Summit Plastic Molding in Chelsea, Mich., helps with the Detroit chapter of the Society of Plastics Engineers' annual toy donation.

About 35,000 toys are molded every year and handed out to the United Way and other charities to give to children in need. The SPE chapter pulls together every sector of the industry to donate time, materials and machines to make it happen.

But Mother Nature had other plans this year. When Hurricane Harvey slammed the Texas coast in late August, among the destruction was a Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. plant — the same plant that churns out the 12,000 pounds of polyethylene donated to the project every year.

Under water and under force majeure, the folks at Chevron Phillips said they weren't able to help this year. So Cooper started reaching out to other suppliers. Given the breadth of the destruction in the Houston area, most remained under their own force majeure conditions, and were unable to help.

"I was just devastated," Cooper said. "It would have been the first time since 1999 that we wouldn't have donated toys."

Then, a glimmer of hope — DowDuPont Inc. could help, but not for the full 12,000 pounds needed. It could supply 3,000 pounds.

That material arrived before Thanksgiving, but SPE wanted all the resin at once so American Plastic Toys, who molds, assembles and packs the toys, could do the whole batch at once.

That's when the PE market started to open up. Perhaps a little Christmas miracle.

ExxonMobil Chemical Co. and Braskem SA both said they were able to provide resin.

"The problem was timing. We needed to get the material in time to mold the toys," Cooper said.

ExxonMobil had a big order heading to a distributor, and Cooper said it did something clever to get it to American Plastic Toys. The company bought it back from the distributor and had it sent to the molder.

Exxon donated 12,000 pounds of PE. So, in the end, the drive ended up with about 15,000 pounds of resin for the toys.

"When push came to shove, we had three jump on board willing to commit and work on getting the material here," Cooper said.

The first batch of toys were molded on Dec. 15 and 23,000 toys were sent to the United Way on Dec. 18.

"They're still finishing up manufacturing, and there will be a second load," Cooper said on the day the first order went out.

In addition to the United Way, SPE is donating toys this year to the American Legion, the Engineering Society of Detroit and Vietnam Veterans of Detroit. Those groups then distribute the toys.

In addition to American Plastic Toys of Walled Lake, Mich., DowDuPont and Exxon, Maple Press donates decals for the toys and E.L. Hollingsworth donates the transportation involved in the donation.