Internet sites and business issues relevant to Canadian processors and moldmakers (March 01, 2000)
By Cindy Macdonald
KEEP TABS ON THE COMPETITION -- EFFORTLESSLYIn a way the Web is a great equalizer. You, an individual, can now use services designed for professional journalists and investment analysts. Monitor the a...
KEEP TABS ON THE COMPETITION — EFFORTLESSLY
In a way the Web is a great equalizer. You, an individual, can now use services designed for professional journalists and investment analysts. Monitor the activity of your competitors and clients by having their press releases sent directly to your e-mail. You see the original statements and information, unfiltered by editors like myself, hours before they even make the pages of newspaper, and weeks before they may appear in a magazine.
Canada NewsWire (1) offers a personalized e-mail service providing news and information from public and private companies, government agencies and non-profit organizations. This free service, called Portfolio E-mail, lets you select the companies you are most interested in tracking from a database of 5000.
Hot off the Wire is a similar service offered by Canadian Corporate News (2).
Also consider searching national and regional newspapers and their archives using key words (plastic, plastics, molding, windows, expansion, etc.). Revisit the sites regularly to keep on top of the news. You may be able to save time by bookmarking the page that shows your search results. If you revisit that bookmark, it should automatically refresh the search results with current information. I make no promises though, this shortcut may not work on all sites. Try National Post (3) and the Globe and Mail (4) for business information. For regional papers, the Canadian Newspaper Association (5) organizes papers by region and could be a good start.
(1) www.newswire.ca
(2) www2.cdn-news.com/hotw
(3) www.globeandmail.com
(4) www.nationalpost.com
(5) www.can-aci.ca
MORE ON PLASTICS MARKETPLACES
The stack of press releases for resin supplier sites, auctions and exchange portals dealing in resins is far to tall to bore you with. A few highlights are:
Chematch.com (6) is now selling about 15 grades of bulk commodity resins (HDPE, LDPE, LLDPE, PP, PS, PVC) on its exchange. Vice-president Don Churchman describes Chematch.com as an anonymous trading floor that has the advantage of letting participants pre-select companies that they wish to deal with, so a company doesn’t find itself making deals with competitors or contracted customers. “Our trading floor accommodates features such as generic prime, wide spec, excess capacity and forward contracts,” says Churchman.
An infusion of new financing has Commerx Inc. ready to expand its PlasticsNet.com (7) site. This multi-faceted site sells a broad selection of machinery and resins.
(6) www.chematch.com
(7) www.plasticsnet.com
