SPI downsizes, refocuses efforts

The Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. (SPI) has announced plans to downsize.

Washington-based SPI is cutting staff, folding its business units into its three industry councils and retrenching to focus on public policy issues, communications and marketing, and trade shows and conferences.

According to SPI, its priorities will be to promote and protect plastics, network to share information, market plastics through trade shows and conferences, and maintain an advocacy role for the industry on regulatory, legislative and public policy issues.

“SPI will come out of this a more vital, more vibrant organization,” president and CEO Bill Carteaux told a news agency. “This was pushed along by the economic conditions and the US$3.2 million cost [to SPI] of the economic stimulus plan for NPE2009,” he said. “But this move was an inevitable part of SPI’s evolution. We need to focus on the bigger issues and not work on as many parochial issues that only affect a handful of members.”

The association’s core budget for 2010 will be roughly 15 per cent lower than in 2009, Carteaux said.

SPI membership, which had grown from 900 to 1,050 in the past four years, has dropped back to roughly 900 again in the wake of the economic recession, Carteaux also said.

The SPI executive board approved the changes July 7, and SPI staff was informed of the changes two days later.