Kickstart: Imflux goes to school

If you come up with a better way to make things, you'd better make sure the workforce knows how that system works.

At least that seems to be part of the reasoning behind a move by Procter & Gamble's Imflux division to places its slow-and-low injection molding system into five different colleges with plastics engineering programs.

At Shawnee State University in Ohio, that means a 100-ton press equipped with Imflux.

"As we were talking about our strategy and how to you get the industry talking about the [system], we thought, what better way to do it than to reach the students who are going to be using it in their careers?" Jodi Hammock, Imflux's director of human resources, education and customer service told Bill Bregar.

Bringing your own bags to the grocery store is one thing. The United Kingdom's Waitrose & Partners shops say they've tapped into a growing business for customers willing to bring their own packaging as well.

Late last month, Waitrose said sales of its loose vegetables grew by 75 percent between Christmas 2018 and 2019. In the last two months alone, loose carrots sales climbed by 21 percent and red potatoes by 23 percent. Loose sprouts outperformed packaged sprouts by 5 percent.

"For the last 20 years the convenience of packaged produce has seen it outsell loose, but as consumers have become increasingly environmentally conscious and wanting to buy only what they need, we could be returning to how people used to shop with loose produce making a big comeback," Paul Bidwell, Waitrose fresh produce buyer, said.

And its not just fruits and vegetables.

At four Waitrose Unpacked shops, where it is testing the potential for all packaging-free sales, sales of pasta, lentils, cereals, frozen fruit, coffee and even wine and beer outsell packaged equivalents by 68 percent.

Well not all of it, obviously, but CES — formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show — officially begins on Jan. 7, which means that we're about to be flooded with news about new phones, home electronic assistants, autonomous cars and very, very, very, very big screen TVs.

Obviously, there's a lot there for suppliers to electronic consumer brands, but increasingly its reach is far beyond the consumer items that were there at the beginning. Just consider the auto industry.

In the past few years, CES has seen nearly as many auto unveilings — especially for autonomous and electric cars — as traditional auto shows. Executives increasingly preferred to spend time there, rather than the traditional North American International Auto Show in Detroit, just a few days later. That's one reason the Detroit Auto Show in 2020 will take place June 7-20 rather than early January.