Kickstart: Lanxess launches diversity task force

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a look at a new racial justice and diversity initiative at materials maker Lanxess Corp.

The article examines how several companies in the Pittsburgh area are addressing racial issues in our country and gives a good bit of ink to what Lanxess is doing.

In particular, the resin supplier started an internal task force on racism and social inequities in July, weeks after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The task force has been meeting every Monday with a focus on both society and the company's operations.

It has 10 members — evenly divided, the paper says, between men and women and Black and white employees — who have been working on a supplier diversity strategy for its North American business.

They've also been building partnerships with nonprofits and historically Black colleges, as well as looking in society at large, at recommendations from a local group aimed at building racial equity in the region.

The paper interviews two Black employees on the task force who say they've not personally experienced discrimination in their careers at the company.

And it interviews Antonis Papadourakis, the president and CEO of North American operations for the German company, who talks about how witnessing Floyd's killing was a wake-up call to see what the company could do.

This has clearly been a summer of building racial awareness.

Erin Pustay Beaven, a colleague at Rubber & Plastics News (RPN and Plastics News share the same ownership), recently wrote this piece from an auto industry event, about an engineer and her observations coming up in her career as a Black woman in manufacturing. It's worth a read.

Beyond being a nationwide ban on plastic checkout bags, cutlery and a few other food packaging items, Canada's Oct. 7 announcement of a plastics policy also may have international trade implications.

One particularly controversial part amounts to a nontariff trade barrier and violates the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, according to charges brought by many U.S. plastics associations and other business groups in a letter to Canadian trade officials.

Canada is suggesting it may put plastics on what's called the Schedule 1 listing under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Potentially, listing on that schedule could see "plastic manufactured items" labeled as toxic.

That has the U.S. groups extremely concerned. And it's prompted some protests in the provinces, with Alberta telling Ottawa that the designation could have a chilling impact on petrochemical investment there and pointing to plastics' vital role in PPE during the pandemic.

But there are signs of a stand down. The Chemistry Industry Association of Canada shares the concerns over CEPA listing, but also said it believes the Canadian government is open to different language.

Everyone in business is looking for that economic crystal ball these days.

My colleague Catherine Kavanaugh had a story this week on global machinery maker Wittmann Battenfeld GmbH pointing to a strong rebound in sales from lows during the depths of COVID-19 in many markets, including medical and in some geographies.

But in a recent virtual news conference, executives with the Austria-based firm also admitted they don't know how long that will last. Again, no one seems to have much of a crystal ball now.

One area that Wittmann Battenfeld CEO Michael Wittmann pointed to as remaining slow was automotive.

Similarly, our sister magazine Automotive News had a sober assessment of the prospects for the supply chain, saying that "for many parts makers, it's still a dark time of perilous finance and strategic rethinking."

It points to 50 to 100 additional supplier bankruptcies, a fallout of falling margins and the chaos of 2020.