Kickstart: Learning other languages for work

One of the elements that stood out about MMI Engineered Solutions Inc., the 2021 winner of Plastics News' Processor of the Year award, was its outreach to refugees to help fill jobs.

As of the end of January this year, it had 39 refugees on the payroll, most from Afghanistan.

As our sister paper Crain's Cleveland Business reports, immigrant populations are proving a solid source for other molders seeking employees.

Mick Jendrisak at Pilot Plastics Inc., a custom injection-molding manufacturer near Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, had added six presses and was facing a tough uphill climb to find employees. After doing some internal restructuring to make the company a more desirable workplace, the company looked at its existing workforce for ideas about where it should reach out. A standout worker was an immigrant from Nepal and said other Nepalis may be interested in jobs there as well.

"What we did was printed up flyers in both Nepali and Hindi," Jendrisak told reporter Kim Palmer. "We put them all over in the Nepali community — at the grocery stores and the little boutiques everywhere that would allow us."

About 85 percent of Pilot's overnight workforce currently are Nepali immigrants.

This week's print issue of Plastics News has the second half of our North American injection molders' rankings. As our data expert Hollee Keller notes in her blog, there is still a lot of money passing through these companies.

The largest of those appearing this week, Sussex IM Inc., posted sales of $71 million for 2021. The 481 firms in this week's list combined to generate $8.5 billion in sales, and the number of firms is more than 4 times as large as those that appeared in the June 20 issue.

"That's a big power base, and calling them little makes me chuckle," she writes.

Meanwhile, our sister paper Automotive News has its own big ranking this week, tracking North American and global auto suppliers. There is a lot of crossover between the plastics and automotive worlds, of course.

In fact, nine of AN's Top 10 global suppliers have at least some interest in plastics manufacturing — Robert Bosch, Denso Corp., ZF, Magna, Hyundai Mobis, Forvia, Continental, BASF and Lear — whether that means housings for sensors, seating, raw material, suspension products or seats and interior parts.

We should know in the next few days if Californians will vote on plastics packaging issues or if the state will adopt changes via a legislative measure that would finance an extended producer responsibility fee on the industry to support environment efforts.

Steve Toloken has been following the discussion related to Senate Bill 54. If the legislature passes it by June 30, a ballot measure related to plastics would be set aside. Industry leaders have preferred SB54 because it is more predictable than what voters may approve.

"But it's not clear if those changes, which came from talks between some key lawmakers, will ultimately be enough to overcome concerns from other interested groups, including a separate coalition of environmental groups pushing for tougher language," Steve writes.