Once at loggerheads, Golden State plastics groups and environmentalists have increasingly worked together to focus on practical results.

"The consumer has been shielded from the cost of recycling," said Bruce Magnani of Houston Magnani & Associates. Government incentives a key to filling the funding gap.

Taiwanese thermoplastic polyurethane extruder DingZing Advanced Materials Inc. has entered the US market by opening an 80,000-square-foot warehouse near its US offices in Secaucus, N.J.

Private equity firm KKR && Co. Inc. has taken LCY Chemical Corp. private in a stock exchange and purchase transaction that values the Taiwanese polypropylene producer at TW$47.8 billion (US$1.56 billion).

Pushed by global toy brands looking to diversify their supply chains, Chinese injection molder and toy maker Combine Will Industrial Co. Ltd. has opened a factory in Indonesia, its first outside its home market.

Rogue toymakers, test-happy executives, countries disagreeing about what a reasonable risk for kids is and, oh yes, yet another casualty of the U.S. government shutdown.

Amid positive news at the massive Hong Kong Toys && Games Fair — Hong Kong's exports of toys jumped 8.6 percent in the first eight months of 2018 to $4.1 billion — industry nabobs and show-floor exhibitors alike fretted over navigating the increasingly choppy oceans of the world economy.

Thus far most toys have not been included in the Trump administration's China tariffs. But with 85 percent of U.S. toys coming from Chinese factories, the industry's concerned over plans by President Trump to slap tariffs on more Chinese imports.

Thanks to the unstoppable rise of online shopping, shelf appeal is losing out to more practical concerns when it comes to designing and packaging goods.

Like a big kid belly-flopping into a kiddie pool, the Toys R Us Inc. bankruptcy sent massive waves through the toy industry this year.

On its second showing at Fakuma, longtime Taiwanese injection press maker Fu Chun Shin Machinery Manufacture Co. Ltd. is pitching European-level service and support at an economical price point.

A longtime specialist in Asia's precision mold and hot-runner tooling markets, Jean Cherng Enterprise Co. Ltd. is eager to boost its European profile.

Star Rapid, a China-based and British-owned prototyping and small batch molding firm, in July launched a two-year program to implement Industry 4.0. It's a sign such next-generation manufacturing processes are increasingly picking up steam in China.

You get the feeling that Thomas Edison — he of 1,093 patents and witticisms linking genius and perspiration — would like Taiwan's Plastics Industry Development Center.

One of Taiwan's biggest injection-molding machine companies highlighted its Industry 4.0 capabilities at the recently completed Taipei Plas show.