CPIA Board Settles On Restructuring Plan

The Canadian Plastics Industry Association (CPIA) has ratified a series of changes for the 2009-2011 budget cycle that will allow the association to restructure. The CPIA will now be split into two key, autonomous divisions, each with its own financial and staff structure.

“CPIA had a fairly complex structure that was increasingly trying to do too much with too little,” noted current CPIA president and CEO Serge Lavoie in an interview with Canadian Plastics. “The feeling was that we had to simplify the structure, and we landed on the two division structure because there are really two key things that we do.”

The Environment and Plastics Industry Council (EPIC) division, currently a standing unit within the CPIA, will concentrate on improving the image of plastics amongst key stakeholders. According to Lavoie, the impetus to turn EPIC into an autonomous entity came from resin suppliers.

While the membership dues from resin companies will be used to fund EPIC’s activities, all of the association’s other activities will be consolidated into a newly created processor division.

The processor division will include all of the CPIA’s activities and events such as the Plast-Ex and Expoplast trade shows, as well as the association’s four regional committees and its three processor-based councils — the Plastic Film Manufacturers Association of Canada, and the Composites and Vinyl Councils.

For industry watchers, the narrowing down of CPIA’s council activities comes as no surprise. Earlier this year, the association announced that it would retain the three councils with the greatest membership, and phase out all the others. The Mould Makers Council was one of the casualties of the upheaval.

Current vice president of environment and health Cathy Cirko will take on the position of executive director for EPIC, and the association will completely eliminate the role of president and CEO. The CPIA is hiring an executive director for the processor division, and the two executive directors will work with the current executive vice president of finance and administration. This three-person management group will report directly to the national board.