Kickstart: Giving Tuesday opportunities in plastics

Today is "Giving Tuesday," touted as an opportunity for shoppers to donate to charity after they've finished their Cyber Monday shopping. (Does every shopping day around Thanksgiving need a name? #Yesitdoes. It's all about social media.)

If you're looking for a plastics charity to support, the Plastics Pioneers Association (PPA) is a not-for-profit, all-volunteer organization focused on fellowship and scholarship. The organization turns 75 next year.

Since 1985, PPA has provided more than $500,000 in scholarships. Currently it offers 15-30 scholarships of $3,000 per year to students in two- or four-year universities pursuing degrees that will lead to careers in the plastics industry. PPA has an education committee that applies a rigorous process to evaluate candidates.

Students can apply for scholarships through the PPA website or through the SPE Foundation.

Funding for scholarships comes from one of four permanent endowments or from pass-through yearly scholarship donations from PPA members and supporting companies. To support the effort, contact George Yule, PPA education committee chair, at [email protected].

I thought that the "keep track" part of this story was cool: PPA wants to make sure that it's meeting the goal of supporting students heading into the plastics industry, so it's been tracking scholarship recipients. PPA says it's currently following 107 scholarship recipients and has found only three who are working in occupations outside plastics.

In a statement, PPA said: "Starting with the 21 scholarship recipients in 2013, these students have gone on to careers at many major Fortune 100 companies. They are engineers and chemists, and many are now managers and leaders of their companies."

After the results of the U.S. midterm election started to become clear, Steve Toloken reported that the biggest impact on plastics may be in state houses, especially in Maryland, Michigan and Minnesota, where Democrats now have control of both legislative chambers and the governor's offices.

That seems to be happening in Massachusetts, where Zero Waste Massachusetts — a coalition of NGOs — is recommending that incoming Gov. Maura Healey make reducing waste a top priority. The group wants the state to implement EPR, plus ban single-use plastic bags and polystyrene foodservice products, and update the state's bottle bill.

Steve and I will discuss the impact of the midterms on plastics, and more, in our Dec. 13 Plastics in Politics Live.

You may think of rotational molding as a sleepy plastics sector. Big hollow parts like tanks and toys. But when it comes to plastics mergers and acquisitions, rotomolding has been red-hot.

M&A experts and private equity firms like to talk about why injection molders, medical processors and packaging converters are attractive investments. But rotomolders?

Consider this: Icelandic rotomolder Rotovia just announced a growth strategy that calls for doubling its business by 2028.

"Growth will mainly come from further penetrating current segments and expanding into new segments in existing geographies," the company said. In addition to organic growth, with an emphasis on sustainability, the company "will also investigate selected M&A opportunities."

Rotovia itself is a product of M&A. Once known as Promens Group, it was sold to RPC Group in 2014, then Berry Global in 2019, and it recently become independent again.

The company isn't huge in North America — yet — but it is already one of the largest rotomolders in the world, with 14 operations in 10 countries, about 800 employees and annual sales of about 134 million euros ($143 million).

Meanwhile, the biggest North American rotomolders are growing via acquisition, too. Tank Holding, the No. 1 company in our ranking, just announced its 20th acquisition in the past three years. And Myers Industries Inc., our No. 2 company, has purchased some of the best-known U.S. custom rotomolders.

If you have not been paying attention, rotomolding has become an interesting sector to watch.