Kickstart: Order now for your end-of-summer pool party

Here comes summer! But wait, you may ask yourself, how do I cool off this summer if the local pool is closed due to the coronavirus?

If your immediate answer was buy a little pool for the backyard, you may already be too late. The Los Angeles Times reports that demand for inflatable vinyl pools — whether for kids or adults — has already swamped demand.

Companies creating and selling vinyl pools, such as the Mylle, Minidip and Funboy brands, all are sold out. Their websites say they expect to be restocked by late June, although you should get in on a presale order now.

Seattle-based Mylle founder Kriss Myllenbeck told the Times the company saw a "comically noticeable geographic spike" in purchases the last weekend in April from Los Angeles.

"We have been a niche brand for an activity most people were only doing on the weekend, and now all of a sudden everyone is home on a Tuesday trying to deal with 90-degree" weather, Myllenbeck said.

In a podcast with Jason Stein, the publisher of our sister publication Automotive News, Magna International Inc. CEO Don Walker suggested the company would like to begin widespread testing of its employees to help it negotiate a safe return to work for everyone.

"Ideally we'd be able to test everybody to say, do they have the disease, do they have the antibodies ... whether they're symptomatic or asymptomatic [to determine] do they have the virus now," he said.

Magna, based in Aurora, Ontario, is the biggest auto supplier in North America and among the biggest in the world. (It's also a major supplier of interior and exterior plastics for the auto industry, ranking at No. 34 on our most recent listing of injection molders in the region with an estimated $275 million in sales.)

Magna has restarted facilities in multiple regions, starting in China and extending through Europe and into North America.

"Now that we've got it started, it is absolutely critical that we don't get the industry shut down again," he said.

Walker predicts a cascade of bankruptcies and liquidity shortages if the industry cannot restart safely. Magna is working with its own medical consultants and government guidelines. A key will be reliable testing to determine who has COVID-19 now and who already developed antibodies to the virus, perhaps through a mild case of the virus.

"As a society, we need to be doing much more testing," Walker said. "What we've been asking is, let's get as many tests as we have, and we'll be asking [workers to] voluntarily to get the test done. The quicker we get the tests done, the better it'll be for everybody."

Nominations are now open for the 2020 Plastics News Processor of the Year.

Yes, it may seem early for an award that will come out in early 2021, but we encourage everyone entering themselves (or another company) for the award to begin the process early.

Why? As Editor Don Loepp writes, there are a lot of details to cover out there.

"We often get asked if there's a checklist or form we send out. The answer is no. It's more like a college term paper — write enough to cover thoroughly the topic."

He covers all of the questions in this blog about how to submit a nomination.