Kickstart: Adding up the costs in support of reshoring

We've been hearing a lot about reshoring lately, not necessarily citing specific numbers, but rather increased interest and contracts from brand owners and OEMS who want to see more production close to home.

In the June Numbers That Matter Live webinar, PN's resident economist Bill Wood says that if reshoring really is a solid trend, it is one that is beginning to finally recognize hidden costs in low-cost sourcing.

"I'm very hopeful that people who are considering reshoring or who are in the supply chain … start to be more aware of the externalized costs," he said. "All of the costs that got pushed to the side, pushed down the road, pushed to someone else by buying from low cost countries."

That could mean the costs associated with keeping shipping lanes open — not just in terms of maintenance, but keeping military strife at bay — investing in dredging ports for larger ships or supporting other governments in your free trade agreements. Add in the costs of using and insuring containers and moving them from the port to your business, and it gets very expensive. That doesn't mean turning away from global trade opportunities, he said, but rather the importance of factoring all of those issues into sourcing decisions.

"I hope that people are more aware now of all of those potential costs and risks and factor those into the price of the products and the value proposition as well," he said. "In my opinion, if companies were to do that, that would enhance demand for more locally sourced goods and services which would ramp up the amount of reshoring."

PN subscribers can catch more of Bill's thoughts on economic matters of interest to the plastics industry in a replay of the webinar here.

Meanwhile, growth in West Virginia is coming not from reshoring, but a move by a German company to place a factory closer to its customers in the U.S.

Papier-Mettler KG is a film maker, printing specialist and paper packaging supplier based in Germany that sees big potential for growth. It announced plans to spend $48 million to move into an existing industrial building in Moorefield, W.Va., for its first U.S. plant, PN's Jim Johnson writes.

"The USA is one of the largest growth markets for Papier-Mettler. That's why we want to focus our energy on U.S. expansion," CEO Michael Mettler said in a statement.

Papier-Mettler also has its own in-house recycling operations to provide recycled content for customers.

As if the plastics industry didn't have enough to handle right now, some conspiracy theorists are dragging polymers into their claims about the government spying on them.

As the fact checking website Snopes.com notes, threads on the website Reddit and a few other sites are claiming that there is something called a "polymer drone fly" being used by the military, and they have video of it.

In fact, as Snopes points out, the video is simply one of a large botfly and it has been on the Internet for at least a year, but without any claims of it being a plastic-bodied drone.

Final conclusion? "It's just a fly," Snopes' Dan Evon writes.