Sales & Marketing

PlasticsToday's Clare Goldsberry has written books for molders and moldmakers that include business and marketing strategies. Based on her long experience, she's come up with five key points to running a successful mold manufacturing operation.

Calling upon its extensive in-house experience with trade shows, SPI: the Plastics Industry Association (Washington, DC), is offering what it calls Concierge Service, a program to help companies that want to exhibit at major plastics shows but are put off by the time, cost, manpower, and logistics involved.

In a tight economy, being creative can be the key to capturing new business, so molder/moldmaker Hollywood Plastics Engineering Co. (San Fernando, CA) has been exercising its creative muscles, offering a program that provides free tooling on qualifying custom injection molded parts orders. The offer is valid on all special orders that meet specific process requirements with respect to complexity, quantity, and materials.

If you've ever gotten exasperated listening to a white-collared CEO talk about his company, using business-school buzzwords that seem to say very little but take up plenty of space, then there is a good chance you'll find something very satisfying in watching a machine manufacturer's president, in casual dress and with his shirtsleeves rolled up, tossing bulky blobs of plastic purgings into his company's new purging recovery system and cranking it up as he explains the unit to an unseen audience.

Injection molding system and automation supplier Engel North America has named Adams Engineers & Equipment as the newest representative of the Austrian-based global firm, handling sales and support for Engel clients in Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.



Citing exponential growth in the demand for bioplastics in Europe, Cereplast Inc. (Hawthorne, CA) has extended its distribution agreement with A. Schulman Inc. (Akron, OH) to include all of continental Europe, and Schulman, which previously concentrated its Cereplast distribution on France and Germany, will be expanding its product offerings  based on the Cereplast materials. 



Mastercraft Companies will be attending the MD&M/Plastec West tradeshow in Anaheim, CA, Feb. 9-11. Mastercraft Companies consists of custom injection molding division Polycraft Industries, and mold manufacturing division Mastercraft Mold. This year, the company will have a 10-ft x 25-ft booth, #3430, and will feature a fully restored 1936 Ford Deluxe pickup truck as a way to attract visitors to the booth.

Victrex has appointed a distributor partner in India to better serve the country’s vast territory, according to a company statement. Earlier this year, it established a Mumbai branch to exploit growth in the local automotive, industrial, textile, and nuclear industries, which all use Victrex’s flagship polymer, polyaryletherketone (PEEK).

PolyMirae has started operations using LyondellBasell’s Metocene polypropylene (PP) technology, the first commercial production of Metocene-based PP in Asia. A Daelim and LyondellBasell Industries joint venture, PolyMirae has installed the metallocene catalyst-based PP technology on one of its Spheripol lines in Yeochun, Korea.

During a visit this month by MPW, officials at film extrusion line manufacturer Macchi (Venegono, Italy) said they are continuing to pursue new machine developments, while also strengthening the company’s after-sales operations. Officials took special care to emphasize that the company was pursuing the goals of Alessandro Macchi, son of the company’s founder and the man most recognized as the face of the firm for more than a decade, whose death in 2008 shook the firm.