Kickstart: Engaging with employees

Plastics News isn't alone in celebrating best places to work. USA Today recently unveiled its top U.S. workplaces, and while white-collar employers dominate the top of the rankings, plastic processors and suppliers also make an appearance.

Coming in at No. 10 out of more than 2,000 workplaces — and the first company not listed as a bank, staffing service, consulting business, insurance provider or similar office job (although kudos to plastics industry analysts at Plante Moran, which came in at No. 2) — is Laitrim LLC and its Intralox division. Intralox is an injection molder and maker of plastic belts and conveying systems, based in the New Orleans suburb of Harahan, La.

Laitrim, which specializes in food processing equipment including automated shrimp peeling machinery, created Intralox in the 1970s to supply its operations. Intralox is now its biggest division.

Also honored in the USA Today list are thermoformer and packaging company Plastic Ingenuity of Cross Plains, Wis., and bottling equipment maker Krones Inc., the Wisconsin-based U.S. arm of Germany's Krones AG.

I'll let you decide: Are these comments from the CEO of auto supplier Magna International Inc. hyperbole or a true statement?

The current U.S. tariff war will have a bigger impact on the auto industry than the 2008 Great Recession, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and microchip shortage combined.

"I'm not being dramatic when I say it's all rolled into one," Swamy Kotagiri said at an April 15 Automotive Press Association event at Magna's U.S. headquarters, as our sister paper Automotive News reported. "It's demand destruction, affordability of vehicles, interest rates and, on top of that, supply chain disruptions. It's a really complex situation."

The U.S. has placed a 25 percent tariff on imported autos, aluminum and steel and has said there will be levies on auto parts starting in May, although there may be exemptions. Some automakers already have paused some production as a result.

While the White House says the moves are being taken to encourage U.S. manufacturing, Kotagiri noted it takes time to adjust production sites and schedules, even for a company like Magna with a global footprint. Based in suburban Toronto, it has production for parts worldwide including interior trim, exterior trim, lighting, mirrors, electronics and powertrain components.

"I don't see how you can just pick something up and move," Kotagiri said. "It sounds easy, but it's not."

A proposal to ban carbon-fiber composites in the European auto industry has been scrapped with authorities in the European Union deciding the material offers more positives than negatives.

The website Motor1.com said the ban was briefly in draft legislation on materials that would be permitted under end-of-life vehicle rules that are supposed to make it easier to reclaim metal, plastics and other components.

Carbon fiber is difficult to recover and reuse.

But Motor1 said that weight and performance improvements offered by the material — particularly to reduce the mass of electric vehicles — led authorities to drop the wording.