Kickstart: When the competition is global, sometimes you win…

London, Ontario-based Nova Sports Equipment Ltd. has been winning business in the competitive canoe market, in part thanks to tariffs.

But we're not talking about tariffs designed to protect Canadian manufacturers. No, the assist is from sales to the European Union, according to Toronto's Globe and Mail.

When the United States put tariffs on EU-made aluminum and steel, Europe retaliated with a 25 percent tax on U.S.-made canoes, according to the report.

CEO Chris Rath credits the initial uptick in demand for Canadian-made canoes to former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose aluminum and steel tariffs caused the EU to respond with a 25 percent tax on U.S.-made canoes.

"We have a bit of an advantage as a Canadian supplier to avoid that tariff, which is significant," Rath told the newspaper. "Our business has doubled, but I think if I could have scaled up more, our business would have been significantly more than just double."

Nova Sports, which makes Nova Craft Canoe products, has also seen a bump from consumers participating in outdoor activities like camping.

But while business is good, the company isn't immune to supply chain issues. Rath explained that Nova Craft's plastic product line uses a foaming agent that's made only in China. He bought a six-month supply in October, but now that's gone.

"Our plastics line has been shut down since about three weeks ago, with no indicators of when it might come back up," Rath told the Globe and Mail. "We struggle every day with something that's not available."

But global competition isn't always good news. Des Moines, Iowa, TV station KCCI has a report about two companies in Iowa that made a basketball return device that lost business when their customer, Dick's Sporting Goods, offshored manufacturing to China.

Belle Plaine, Iowa-based BallBack Inc. has been doing business with Dick's for about 10 years, according to the story. But a few months ago, one of BallBack's sales reps noticed a competing device in a Dick's retail store.

That's bad news for Marengo, Iowa-based fabricator Kelly Plastics Inc., which had been making 40,000-60,000 of the devices annually. This year President Mike McInnis expects to make 10,000-20,000.

Dick's denied it did anything wrong and said its product does not violate BallBack's patent.

For the past few years, we've seen more stories about reshoring — bringing work back to North America from overseas — and less about offshoring.

With global shipping and logistics challenges, that seems like a trend that will continue. And that's a topic we'll discuss next week in the panels that I'm moderating at the Injection Molding & Design Expo in Detroit.

In my regular news searches today, I noticed that every major U.K. newspaper posted a story about something called the Big Plastics Count. Somehow it was the first I heard of the event.

Greenpeace is behind the project, which asks everyone in the United Kingdom to keep track of how much plastic packaging they throw away this week, in order to provide a national snapshot of the plastic waste problem.

Actor Bonnie Wright, who played Ginny Weasley in the Harry Potter series and has been involved in plastics waste issues before, is the main celebrity behind the Big Plastics Count.

Based on the initial splash, I expect to see more publicity on this project in the coming week.