Kickstart: Is this the image of future trade shows?

In December, auto dealers and car buyers united in what we may be able to consider a test drive for the convention business in Orlando, Fla.

The Central Florida International Auto Show took place at the Orange County Convention Center — the same facility that is set to house NPE2021 in May.

As our sister paper Automotive News reported: "Organizers required masks and marked one-way aisles to help ensure a safe environment at what was believed to be the first U.S. auto show since March."

It was a small event over two days, Dec. 18-20, with just 20 auto brands showing vehicles in the site's North Concourse, but perhaps it shows what may be possible in a few months.

Rotational molding used to be the quiet corner of the plastics industry, with lots of steady sales for items like toys and kayaks and tanks, but otherwise not a lot of news.

That's changed since private equity's Olympus Partners bought Tank Holding Corp. two years ago and has since followed that up with a steady pattern of growth through acquisition. In its newest deal, Tank Holding purchased Rotational Molding Inc. of California — its 11th acquisition since 2019.

As Steve Toloken writes, Tank Holding, based in Lincoln, Neb., topped the Plastics News ranking for rotomolders in North America with $350 million in sales, about twice the size of the next largest firm. It had 900 employees before the RMI acquisition.

And as of November 2020, there's another player in the rotomolding M&A field, with Myers Industries Inc. announcing a plan to grow through acquisitions, starting with rotomolder Elkhart Plastics Inc. Joining Elkhart with its existing Ameri-Kart division has already turned Myers into the fifth-largest rotomolder in North America.

Don't be surprised if more rotomolding news shakes out in the coming months.

If you missed this during the holidays, just before Christmas we posted Plastics News' annual Plastics Globes awards. These awards are much less prestigious than Processor of the Year (finalists for POY will be announced Jan. 11, by the way), but just as fun to follow.

As Editor Don Loepp noted, the awards are "our annual irreverent tribute to the plastics industry's newsmakers."

I get a kick out of these every year. They're the place to deal with those ridiculous emails you get every year that make you want to scream, or at least shake your head.

For instance, an "award" for a company that sent a photo of a medical product featuring a gloved hand with six fingers. Just a bad Photoshop job or did they use the guy who killed Inigo Montoya's father as a model?