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March 25, 2021 08:13 AM

Kickstart: A blast from the midcentury past

Rhoda Miel
Managing Editor
Plastics News Staff
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    A blast from the midcentury past

    A home for sale in northern Indiana is offering a retro look at midcentury modern home construction and furniture, and at the same time, it provides a glimpse at the history of companies now supplying plastics for construction.

    Our sister paper Crain's Chicago Business tells the story of a house for sale in Michigan City, Ind., that was once a model home for Alside, the Akron, Ohio, company that now sells composite siding. Back in 1964, Alside Homes Corp. created homes using colorful aluminum panels and modules that could be put together in just a couple of days.

    The original owners, Robert Frost and his wife, Amelia, spotted it and loved the model so much they bought it as is, CCB writes. They then left almost everything as it was, including molded plastic furniture from Knoll, which now is best known as an office furniture maker.

    When the Frost family finally sold it in 2016 to Karen Valentine and her husband, Bob Coscarelli, they picked a couple who loved the style and kept everything in place with a couple of exceptions. Valentine and Coscarelli had to replace a stovetop, although the rest of the appliances remain in place, and they added luxury vinyl tile for flooring.

    When the couple built a pool at an attached lot, they had to install safety fencing but didn't want to lose the style of the house, so instead they created a fence of polycarbonate panels to retain the midcentury modern look.

    The Frost house is now going on the market for $750,000. Even if you're not in the market — and can't see the story in CCB — the owners have a wealth of photos on a website dedicated to the Frost house and the entire Alside module home history.

    Let's talk growth

    Context is everything. You can take a look at the top 10 list for any of Plastics News' rankings for processors and get an idea of who the big players are. But who's growing? And how quickly?

    Our data guru Hollee Keller has been doing some number crunching to figure out what companies are the growing the fastest.

    Berry Global Group Inc. had the biggest increase in sales in terms of pure numbers for injection molders, thanks to acquisitions. But Intermolding Technology LLC, a contract and custom injection molder in Des Plaines, Ill., takes the No. 1 spot with a year-over-year increase of 375 percent.

    Hollee has collected that data for a new report, available for sale from our data store. You can read more about it here.


    And while we're speaking of growth...

    Later today, we'll post a feature article on Plastek Industries Inc., the newest winner of Plastics News Processor of the Year.

    But let's take a moment here to check on another recent winner. Petoskey Plastics Inc. was PN's Processor of the Year in 2017. The film maker and recycler has kept busy since then, and continued to grow.

    This week it announced it is taking a big geographic leap, opening its first plant in Texas. The site in suburban Dallas-Fort Worth will allow Petoskey Plastics to boost production by 15 percent and will place it closer to customers in the Southwest and Western U.S.

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