Kickstart: Enter vinyl

The band Metallica has joined the plastics industry.

Kind of.

The hard rock band announced March 14 that it has purchased a majority share in Furnace Record Pressing of Alexandria, Va., a maker of vinyl records since 1996.

Metallica worked with Furnace previously to issue deluxe box set editions of its albums and said in the release it has enjoyed a "prolific and productive relationship, one rooted in a shared fiercely independent ethos and passionate dedication to quality."

Furnace has 12 Pheenix Alpha presses and two Finebilt presses. Sweden-based Pheenix opened in 2006 as a new generation of music fans began turning away from digital sound in favor of vinyl. It acquired the assets of the record pressing equipment company that began as AB Alpha in the 1930s.

With the investment, members of Metallica join Jack White as record manufacturing musicians. White's Third Man Records operates in Detroit and Nashville, using presses made by Germany's Newbilt Machinery.

"Welcome to the cause gents, and thank you for putting your money to amazing creative use," White wrote in a social media post. "Here's hoping the major labels will also see this as further proof, and finally start investing in themselves. Outstanding."

Hiring new staff is expensive, but you know what is more expensive? Hiring the wrong staff or failing to put enough money and effort into workforce recruiting and seeing a constant stream of people leaving the company.

Sam Cottrill, from our sister paper Rubber News, has a story on the big investment by pipe maker Ipex to bump up its staff.

Cheryl Stargratt, Ipex's chief human resources officer for North America, said at the 2022 Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum that when she joined the company — with more than 3,000 employees — it had only four people on its talent acquisition team, and those people were only for salaried workers. Individual plant managers were left on their own to develop best practices for hiring hourly workers.

"It became very clear to us — and quickly — that we needed to undergo a transformation to enhance and refine how we recruit talent in order to support the company's growth strategy. Otherwise, we weren't growing," she said.

The investment is seeing results, she said. In 2020, Ipex hired 154 salaried workers and 586 hourly workers. By November 2022, it had hired 400 salaried employees and more than 1,000 hourly workers.

You can find more about the process here.

South Korea's LG Chem has a product line that covers a wide range of end markets. Plastics is part of its business, of course, but it also is a big pharmaceutical supplier. Its work in the medical industry has it supplying $200 million worth of polio vaccines to UNICEF.

In addition to the Eupolio vaccine, LG Chem will also supply the Eupenta vaccine that prevents diptheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and meningitis.

LG Chem's vaccines will protect 80 million infants and children worldwide, the company said in a March 14 news release.