Kickstart: An automotive 'trailblazer'

William "Doc" Pickard built an auto assembly supply powerhouse in the late 1990s and early 2000s, setting a path for Black entrepreneurs entering the industry. With injection molding under Regal Plastics and fuel tank blow molding with Vitek LLC, an auto exterior joint venture and assembly operations — brought together under the Global Automotive Alliance in 1999 — Pickard said the companies could provide "one-stop shopping" for carmakers.

"Anything from interior components to entire fuel tanks to complete bumper fascias will be part of it," he told Plastics News in 1999. "We're stronger by offering a broad range of capabilities from one location.''

GAA is still running, though now offering assembly, logistics and supply chain management. Pickard has also continued to influence a new generation of auto industry workers through his businesses and donations to colleges and institutions such as the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit.

He will be honored Feb. 24 by the General Motors African American Network, a group of GM employees, at an event in Detroit.

"[He] is a visionary and trailblazer like no other," Tamberlin Golden, director of Workforce Strategy at GM and GMAAN president, told the Detroit Free Press in a profile about Pickard. "His bold leadership, dedication to service and entrepreneurial pursuits have paved the way for economic empowerment and advancement for many."

The Society of Plastics Engineers' automotive division has opened nominations for the 2023 Automotive Innovation Awards.

The annual event honors vehicles for breakthroughs in plastics use in interiors, safety, sustainability, exteriors, powertrain and a range of other parts. Nominations must be for cars in production in 2023.

Entries for most parts will be due in September, but applications for the Hall of Fame award — for parts in continuous use for 15 years or more — are due May 31.

The Hall of Fame part must be "game-changing; very successful worldwide; innovative in materials, process and application; and still being used."

Applications and more information are available here.

It probably surprises no one that the U.S. Plastics Pact expects it will miss its initial goals for recycled content in plastic packaging.

As PN's Steve Toloken writes, the organization made up of major consumer brands and retailers — among them Coca-Cola Co. and Walmart Inc. — said Feb. 23 that its member companies had 8 percent post-consumer or bio-based plastic content in their packaging in 2021, well off the pace to hit a target of 30 percent by 2025.

But Executive Director Emily Tipaldo points to lessons learned by the group that will lay the groundwork for improvements in the future.

"It's so integral to unlocking bigger change and bigger progress down the road," she said.

You can find Steve's full report here.