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January 28, 2022 08:31 AM

Kickstart: Are you ready for some Puppy Bowl?

Rhoda Miel
Managing Editor
Plastics News Staff
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    Are you ready for some Puppy Bowl?

    Not every company can claim to have a close link to the big game being played on Feb. 13. No, not the Super Bowl, but the far more enjoyable Puppy Bowl.

    Dewberry, a chihuahua and poodle mix, will be supporting Team Ruff as a cheerleader in the annual event on cable television's Animal Planet. Dewberry, a stray from Texas, was fostered by Ann Brookes, a corporate counsel with machinery company Farrel Pomini in Ansonia, Conn. (Two other pups she fostered, including Dewberry's brother, also are on the roster for the Puppy Bowl.)

    "[Dewberry] was great. she jumped right in, she had pompoms, a wardrobe assistant," Brookes told local TV station WTNH. "She's spunky, and of the litter, she's the nosiest."

    Since taping the Puppy Bowl, Dewberry has been adopted.

     

     

    COVID and missing workers

    We all know there's a labor shortage, not just in plastics or manufacturing, but everywhere. Everything from government bonuses (although those have ended) to chaotic school schedules and employees joining "The Great Resignation" have been blamed for the lack of available workers.

    But a researcher at the Brookings Institution has been crunching the numbers and is looking at another angle. Perhaps part of the shortage is due to something that isn't being counted: People hit hard by COVID-19 who haven't been able to return to regular duties.

    People battling lingering issues — commonly called long COVID — may account for a big number of the reduced workforce, Katie Bach, a nonresident senior fellow at Brookings, said.

    "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that through October 2021, just over 100 million Americans between the ages of 18 and 64 have contracted COVID-19. And studies suggest that between 27 percent and 33 percent of COVID-19 patients still experience symptoms months after infection," Bach writes.

    "That means 31 million working-age Americans — more than one in seven —may have experienced, or be experiencing, lingering COVID-19 symptoms," she added.

    Bach notes that she doesn't have hard data on her theory yet, in part because the data that would confirm it simply isn't being collected at this point.

    "Why don't we hear more about it? Poor data may be the culprit; there is no clear and comprehensive source of data about how many people are not working due to long COVID," she said.

     

    M&A mania

    Next week's print issue of Plastics News includes a roundup of mergers and acquisitions in 2021. (Spoiler alert, it was a very big year for M&A.)

    How busy has it been? Here's one investment firm's statistics as an example. Graham Partners, the private group that has been buying and selling plastics companies since the 1980s, just purchased Canyon Plastics Inc., an injection molding and blow molding firm based in California to add to its VPET USA LLC platform.

    As PN's Jim Johnson writes, "the Canyon deal was one of several moves in 2021 ... including 'six exits, three platform investments, three add-on acquisitions and two growth investments.'"

     

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