Features

Charged and ready: Engineering resins for electric and hybrid vehicles

As any blackjack player could tell you, doubling down involves a big risk. But it’s one thing to chance it at the local casino for half a day’s pay, quite another when careers, reputations, and hundreds of millions of dollars are on…

PolyCello’s extended family success story

Repeated selection as one Canada’s “Best Managed Companies” doesn’t happen simply by maintaining best business practices. If it did, probably every third firm in the country would get the nod. Instead, it takes more…

The rise of 3D printing

Sometimes layering can take a long time — as in millions of years. Take rocks. They’re stacked in layers containing fossils, with the oldest fossils at the deepest layers and the most recent near the top. For scientists and…

R&M Plastic Products beats the third-generation curse

Some family businesses just don’t work. Fans of The Godfather trilogy, for example, may recall the brothers in the Corleone mob clan winding up as how-to guides for dysfunction. And it’s not like you couldn’t find a gazillion…

K 2013 WRAP UP: OTHER COOL STUFF

New additive manufacturing machine

K 2013 WRAP UP: MOLD TECHNOLOGY

K 2013 WRAP UP: RECYCLING

K 2013 WRAP UP: MATERIALS

K 2013 WRAP UP: ROBOTS & AUTOMATION

K 2013 WRAP UP: AUXILIARY EQUIPMENT

K 2013 WRAP UP: EXTRUSION

K 2013 WRAP UP: INJECTION MOLDING

MEGA BRANDS lays building blocks for growth

The business of making toys isn’t exactly fun and games — more like the latest extreme roller coaster ride, complete with white knuckle loops, plummets, and 180-degree turns.

Schad’s Athena Automation hits the stage

Famed writer F. Scott Fitzgerald claimed there are no second acts in American lives. Lucky for him he wasn’t looking north of the border, because up here in Canada, plastics industry pioneer Robert Schad is well into Act 2, Scene 4.

The man who helped KO TO’s plastic bag ban: Talking with CPIA Leader of the Year Gerry Maldoff

Most of us would probably consider being a lawyer as a safe-as-houses route towards economic security. Gerry Maldoff didn’t, and gave up practicing law for a career in plastics.

After 50 years with one company, a plastics worker looks back

In 1963, Lester Pearson was Canada’s Prime Minister, the Beatles were still in Liverpool, and Branko Muich started working at a new Toronto-based custom extrusion shop called Polyform Ltd.

Quebec’s Precimold is finding its own way forward

The mid-1960s was a long time ago, and you don’t last from then until now without reinventing yourself along the way.

Winnipeg’s COLOR AD PACKAGING finds its sweet spot

For any hockey fans working at Winnipeg-based flexible packaging manufacturer Color Ad Packaging Ltd., these are salad days. First, you’ve got the Jets back. Second, Color Ad’s business is booming.

DRYERS: The Necessary Nine

When it comes to drying polymers, figuring out the “why” is easy: to control viscosity and ensure maximum performance. It’s the “how” that can keep you up at night. Resin drying — especially involving…

Some Assembly Required: Chiller installation made semi-easy

Installation can be everything. That surround sound home theatre system in your man cave will sound worse than a two-cans-and-a-string telephone if it hasn’t been put in properly. Ditto chillers. Whether portable or central, the most…