Kickstart: The art and science of parade balloons

Before any of the 16 giant balloons float above the streets of New York for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, they begin as coated material manufactured at a Trelleborg Coated Systems Inc. plant in Monson, Mass.

The company, part of Sweden's Trelleborg Group, said in a 2021 blog post that it knows the material must meet some unique requirements for the parade. It must be waterproof and UV resistant to withstand November weather conditions, must have a paintable surface to add details for each character and be packable but pliable.

The material is shipped from Massachusetts to Macy's Parade Studio in Moonachie, N.J., for actual production from "balloonatics" on staff.

The balloons are reused year after year.

"For a Macy's balloon, there's a lot of art but there's also a lot of science," John Piper, vice president of Macy's Parade Studio says in a new video from Scholastic. "We have to figure out how much gas needs to go inside the balloon so the balloon will fly."

If you're curious, Piper also shows how the balloons' deflation ports that are opened after the parade so they can be packed and stored for future years. (Trelleborg notes that in their first years, the balloons were simply released and allowed to float away. Anyone who found one could return them for a gift certificate.)

The combination of Röhm GmbH's acrylic products business and Sabic's functional forms division now has its own name: Polyvantis.

The rebranded business will have annual sales of $700 million and 1,500 employees worldwide and will produce plastic film, sheet and rods products under the Plexiglas, Acrylite and Lexan brand names.

Röhm, based in Darmstadt, Germany, announced its acquisition of the Sabic business in late 2022, saying it would create a global leader in transparent sheets and films.

The deal is expected to be finalized in the first half of 2024. Polyvantis will have long-term license agreements for the brands while the molding compounds business for Plexiglas and Acrylite will remain at Röhm and the polycarbonate Lexan resin business stays with Sabic. That means Polyvantis will retain close ties with both Röhm and Sabic.

This being the 21st century, the new name represents a mixture of languages and product concepts. Röhm noted in a news release that the company takes its name from "poly," the Greek prefix meaning many, and both the Italian word "avanti" and French word "avant," both of them meaning "forward."

Some recent news involving a plastics company acquisition also has a Hollywood connection.

In her story on Reynolds Advanced Materials' purchase of Eagle Polymers, PN correspondent Jeannie Reall writes that Eagle has a distribution business in materials for mold making, epoxies and urethanes.

Part of the customer list — for both companies — is made up of special effects artists who create makeup prosthetics and props for film and television.

So, if you need to make a fake weapon, create a zombie, provide the "blood spatter" for a crime scene or a a simple prosthetic wound, they have you covered.