Kickstart: Court ruling favors upstream suppliers

A Michigan Supreme Court case may alter the rules in the auto supply industry, creating an advantage for companies further up the supply chain.

Our sister paper Crain's Detroit Business writes that the specific case decided July 11, involving Tier 1 suspension systems maker MSSC Inc. and rubber materials supplier AirBoss Flexible Products Co., appears on the surface to be a fairly standard dispute between two auto suppliers. But Justice Elizabeth Welch's decision that supply agreements are not requirement contracts by default means that buyers must be explicit in their contracts about what they intend to buy, rather than keeping purchase terms vague and more flexible — a move that tends to favor buyers, court watchers said.

Attorney Michael Brady, who represented AirBoss, tells CDB's Kurt Nagle that it "levels the playing field for buyers and sellers."

"The way the law had been, it gave buyers — whether it's an OEM or a supplier doing business with another supplier — a bit more bargaining power," Brady said. The new opinion does the opposite.

That means the ruling should have implications for suppliers looking to pass on increased material costs, he added.

Playmobil's sustainable plastic toys have gone down under.

The toys, made by Germany-based Horst Brandstätter Group, has added koalas and kangaroos to its Wiltopia line of toys with more sustainable materials. They come a year after the company introduced the first bio-based Playmobil figurines. They are made with at least 80 percent bio-based or recycled plastics, including material recovered from scrapped refrigerators.

"Wiltopia stands for a world in which animals and nature are protected and appreciated," Roger Balser, head of the Playmobil business unit at Horst Brandstätter, said earlier this year.

Greenpeace and the marketing group DDB Hong Kong want to make it harder to rest easily while pollution continues. The environmental group's Seabed art piece replaces a normal mattress with one filled with trash collected from Hong Kong's Sai Kung district.

Created by Phoebe Chan, DDB Group Hong Kong's creative director, it was part of the Sea our Home exhibition, presented through July 16 in Hong Kong to support ocean protection awareness.

Chan says Seabed is intended to make visitors think about what lies beneath the surface and "make the invisible visible."

"Once people look beyond the ordinary and see for themselves the realistic state of the seabed, we are hopeful that people will now think twice about disposing of plastic in the ocean," she said.

Greenpeace says at least 48,000 pieces of plastic trash are swept into Hong Kong's Tolo Harbor each day. Most is swept out to sea, but a Greenpeace volunteer collected the items used in the exhibit.