Kickstart: A story from behind the news story

Most days, the news comes at you fast.

Plastics News prides itself in providing breaking news combined with context that helps our readers understand what's going on. But sometimes the old rules of print journalism still affect us.

Here's a peek behind the curtain as it relates to this week's issue. For a typical print edition of PN, we have inside pages that are printed on the Wednesday before the issue comes out, some that go to the printer on Thursday and the rest of the pages go to the printer on Friday. This week, two of those pages that went to the printer on Wednesday were caught by breaking news on Friday.

On page 12 of the Aug. 15 issue, you'll find a story by Frank Esposito with a lot of analysis and discussion on what companies may be bidding for Avient Corp.'s distribution business.

Then on Friday morning, Avient announced that an affiliate of private equity's HIG Capital beat out competitors for the business. (For the record, Phil Karig, managing director of Mathelin Bay Associates, said in that print story that private equity companies should be considered in the list of possible buyers.)

Meanwhile, over on page 18, you can find the print version of Bridget Janis' story (that appeared on plasticsnews.com on Aug. 9) that California lawmakers were considering limits to plastics used in e-commerce shipping. But by Friday, the California Senate essentially killed the bill.

Every day PN does its best to stay ahead of the news, and the web is a great place for that. But for now, the world of the printing press is still working to keep up.

This year may be a little rocky in terms of the stock market, but it looks like 2021 was a good year to be an executive with a publicly traded auto industry company.

Our sister paper Automotive News is out with the list of top pay for auto executives, including both salary and some lucrative stock options.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tops the list, which probably isn't surprising. But perhaps the total compensation of $23.5 billion he received is. Jensen Huang, CEO of software supplier Nvidia Corp., was at No. 2, well behind Musk with a total compensation package of $560.9 million. (Automotive is only a small portion of Nvidia's business.)

But you don't have to be Musk to have had a nice payout in 2021.

"The median for all CEOs was $12.3 million, which represents a 78 percent increase over the median of those same CEOs [in 2020]," George Weykamp writes.

If there is particularly cool and rainy weather during this year's K show in Düsseldorf, Germany, in October, maybe BASF can help you out with something a bit warmer. And greener.

At the show, the German chemical giant will feature its work with the outdoor apparel brand Vaude to display clothing made from Ultramid Ccycled, which is chemically recycled nylon 6 taken from old tires.

"We want to be a pioneer in building up a circular economy for our functional clothing," Rene Bethmann, innovation manager at Vaude, said in European Rubber Journal. "By using Ultramid Ccycled, we can reduce the carbon footprint by more than half."

The companies said in a news release that the Vaude clothing line went on sale earlier this year.