Kickstart: Trying to sum up a lot of news for one recycling firm

From the outside looking in, it's hard to know what to make of PureCycle Technologies Inc.

The company certainly looks like it has an inside track to successful large-scale recycling of polypropylene by licensing technology developed by Procter & Gamble Co. to use solvents to purify PP into "virgin-like" resin. P&G is a major company with a history in developing new technology for plastics — namely its Imflux process.

But while PureCycle announces plans for new production in Europe, a project to expand into South Korea and a distribution deal with Formerra — the former distribution business of Avient Corp. — it is also facing complications with planned expansions in Georgia and Florida.

Its first commercial-scale plant in Ironton, Ohio, is expected to open in April, but as PN's Jim Johnson reports, that's behind an earlier-announced start date in the first quarter of 2023 and the project could run up to 50 percent over the expected budget.

Since its high of more than $25 per share in 2020, PureCycle's stock has traded at between $5 and $10 a share since early 2022.

Despite all that, CEO Dustin Olson remains positive.

"Over the last six months we have encountered and worked our way through several speed bumps and are now in control of our destiny," he said March 16. "It is now time for PureCycle to change the landscape of plastic recycling."

A lot of plastics companies have sponsored high school FIRST Robotics teams: Team One, PTI Engineered Plastics, Curbell and Accede Mold & Tool, to name just a few. It probably isn't surprising that a lot of the companies involved in a program to educate and mentor young engineers in high school also end up winning awards.

FIRST has students develop robots that must perform specific tasks, with the winner in regional tournaments picked from those robots that successfully complete those tasks.

Richard Truett from our sister paper Automotive News has a blog about his recent experience judging the Michigan State Regional robotics competition in Flint, Mich. It's clear why companies get involved, he writes. These students have exposure to key skills.

"When we're looking at students for internships and when they're interviewing for full-time positions at Ford, we look to see if they have FIRST experience," said Birgit Sorgenfrei, a Ford project lead on advanced drive assistance systems at Ford and a FIRST judge for more than 20 years.

Want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and manufacturing skills?

Combilift, a maker of forklifts and material handling equipment based in Monaghan, Ireland, took to YouTube and social media with a video to preview its multidirectional Combi forklift by showing an operator writing out the word "happy" — to go along with the "St. Patrick's Day" part of the greeting, created digitally — via an oversized pencil and the forklift.

While the machine's capabilities in moving across the floor may be impressive, the ability of the operator to control it to recreate flowing script is the big shocker to me. (If it was all done as video editing trickery, I'll be disappointed, but it does appear that the forklift's movement matches the script on the pavement.)

The company marks its 25th year in business in 2023.