Coming out of the Great Recession, Canada’s manufacturing sector looked like scorched earth after a massive forest fire. But scorched earth sometimes encourages new growth. In post-recession Southern Ontario, one group of entrepreneurs surveyed the landscape and saw opportunity.…
Hydraulic fracturing can open vast stores of cheap natural gas, to the benefit of North America’s chemical and plastics industry. The weird part is that, after more than 60 years, the process has suddenly become a lightning rod for controversy, and even outright bans. Here’s why.
New ownership is reinventing a familiar fixture of Canada’s plastics processing scene.
Just because something grows on trees doesn’t make it inexhaustible. Take wood. It doesn’t just grow on trees, it is the tree. But people still want to use less of it if possible. A prime example is wooden railroad…
Energy costs are on the rise in Ontario, and chemical manufacturers are huge consumers. So now is definitely the time to get serious about finding new and efficient ways of using your electricity. The good news? There’s a wealth of experts and incentive programs at hand to help you along.
We’ve all heard it from time to time — “So-and-so was born to do this job”. Unless you’re talking about Prince Charles, however, odds are it’s just a throwaway line. But with Brian Bendig, the president of Windsor, Ont.-based…
In what might be the best military news since the United States Navy SEALS tracked down bin Laden, soldiers wounded by gunshots and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) may soon be treated with a polymer-based medical device that can literally…
Close might be good enough when tossing a hand grenade, but it won’t cut it in critical applications like medical tubing. Which is why medical extruders can’t afford to overlook even the smallest process flaw. And there’s a host…
Founders of equipment maker Future Design have returned to the industry.
Go back 30 years and many of Canada’s moldmakers and plastics processors probably had at least one or two Portuguese companies as go-to contacts on their rolodexes. With a centuries-old glass making tradition that crossed naturally over into creating…
Sean O’Neil, president of Cutting-Edge Technologies Ltd., on the shop floor. The company will be undergoing a US$10 million expansion and hiring spree due to a partnership with an American-based company. (Photo Credit: DAX MELMER/The Windsor Star) What with…
Never underestimate the power of a good teacher. Socrates taught Plato, and that turned out all right. Twenty-five hundred-odd years later, the role of teacher is one that Jim Ellies is happy to take on. A 35-year veteran of…
As Bill Clinton could tell you, being tipped off to a problem before it happens can mean the difference between life and death. In 2004, doctors of the former U.S. president saved him from a looming — and possibly…
Popular ideas can be hard to resist. Brian Burke convinced a lot of people that Phil Kessel would turn the Toronto Maple Leafs around, for example. Speaking of things turning around, another popular narrative involves reshoring. According to many,…
More and more, it feels like it’s a polystyrene foam world and we just live in it. From insulating concrete in homes to beer koozies by the pool, expanded polystyrene (EPS) and expanded polypropylene (EPP) are everywhere. Including landfills,…
Sci-fi film buffs might remember a late-80s movie called The Fly, in which a scientist develops a machine that instantaneously transfers matter from one location to another through space. “It will change the world as we know it,” he…
Think it’s tough putting together a decent jacket-shirt-tie combo in the morning? Try mastering the complexities of designing an injection molded appearance part for production runs in the hundreds of thousands. It’s as difficult as it sounds. “Small details…
Microbes may be nothing more than tiny single-celled organisms, but they’re harder to kill than Rasputin. They’re resilient enough, in fact, that scientists have revived them from fossils more than 250 million years old. They also…
Canadian automotive parts makers are fully capable of competing globally, but it’s still crucial to retain Canada’s existing auto assembly plants, according to Flavio Volpe, the new president of the Automotive Parts Manufacturers Association (APMA). It all adds up…
Si la route qui mène au succès est souvent parsemée de difficultés, elle est ussi faite de moments charnières au cœur desquels les décisions prises par les dirigeants sont déterminantes….
