In only a few weeks, PPE has become part of the common lexicon.  Isolation gowns are fortunately not as in high demand as projected just a few weeks ago.  Hospital supply chain managers are now thinking in terms of being prepared for summer and fall surges and stocking up for the next round.  The term isolation gown is used loosely but interpreted literally in healthcare.     Here is a condensed guide to the variations within the isolation gown species.  This is limited to gowns for medical personnel only and does not include European EN 13795 classification ..read more

Verbal shorthand when thrown around casually can lead to misunderstandings especially to an industry insider who takes these terms literally.  Herewith is a short explanation of some common acronyms for plastic films in plain English starting with the basic chemical building block.   The only thing common to all three is ethylene, C2H4 or " C2" for short in the petrochemical realm.  This building block is a monomer.  String them together with variations on a theme and you got the polymer ( poly vs. mono ) polyethylene. PE, PEVA and metallocene PE are all polyethy ..read more

In a crisis, political correctness gets relegated to abeyance.  For example, Roosevelt and Lincoln both contravened the Constitution. In 2008 in the aftermath of hurricanes Rita and Katrina the EPA put the summer regional formulations on hold when unleaded gas hit $ 6 per gallon in Atlanta.  Of course they were reinstated in spring 2009. The U S government is doing the inverse of overreach in the coronavirus pandemic.  Cumbersome regulations for truckers have been rolled back like Walmart pricing to meet real needs. Bashing plastic straw men became one of the favorite targets of virtue sign ..read more

Everybody wants replacements for politically incorrect plastic films to be exactly like the original.  No property trade-offs.  No exaggeration.  Would these same people expect the same results from direct substitution of stevia, xylitol or saccharin ? There are many drivers.  Back in the 1990's when PVC started to fall out of favor, we got calls for PVC replacement.   The major complaint about our metallocene which mimicked the "hand" of vinyl was that it did not seal in the heirloom RF sealers.  The expectation was that a non-polar molecule would behave just like a polar molecule ..read more

It's cliche but true - when milk is cheap, why buy a cow ?  Peter Drucker said it is better to integrate upstream than downstream.  The case for vertical integration play involves payback analysis and other factors.  Henry Ford made his own power mainly because he was fed up with dirty intermittent power.  I can relate. The most common fallacy of vertically integrated PE film supply is not treating it as a stand-alone P & L.   Many companies opt to buy film even though they consume enough film to feed a grass roots film plant. Procter and Gamble Clopay have had a symbiotic relationsh ..read more

Product development is a rough, bumpy ride with no certain outcome.   It's always a bracketing process which requires many iterations no matter how methodical the approach. Sir James Dyson thrives on failure.  His vacuum cleaner has been through 5,126 versions.  Well tested products often result in recalls.     What replaces a bad idea ?  A better one, of course.  De Havillands' culture was that if something didn't look right, it probably wasn't right.  The reason airplane windows are rounded is that the Comet broke up in flight because the square windows cracked in the corners. Thom ..read more

Like any industry which matures, there is first a dynamic growth curve followed by the inevitable consolidation wave.  The blown PE film business is both consolidating and contracting. By the 1920's, there was a proliferation of automobile manufacturers in the thousands.  Aerospace didn't have thousands of airplane manufacturers, but maybe hundreds.  An early map of the Kimberley mine was complex with stakes by numerous colorful characters.  Where are they now ?   Back in the 1950's, the commercial viability of blown PE film was uncertain.  Before our founder Joe Longstreth established B ..read more

Feedstocks are the major drivers of the price of plastics.  Whether you are for or against fracking, it has had a dramatic effect on the price of anything derived from natural gas or oil.  Not so long ago, Alan Greenspan expressed concern about depletion of natural gas in the U S.   Time was "peak oil" was sacrosanct. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576572552998674340.html  The time horizon for peak oil gets pushed farther into the future.  Now it's cool to say "peak demand".  Soon we will have benevolent government control of our electric cars and solar powere ..read more

Plastic bashing has reached a tipping point.  Virtue signallers do not present viable alternatives.  They show they care more by saying they hate __________  and voila !   The hater has instant moral high ground.  Hatred for plastics yields a double bump.  Plastic not only pollutes.  It is derived from evil fracked fossil fuels. Fear of plastic haters can lead to bad decisions. Virtue signalling is nothing new.  In the middle ages advertising virtuosity took many forms such as vows of chastity and flagellation. Today protest marchers gain instant acceptance. There is a sinister Ma ..read more

A properly designed machine has no unnecessary parts.  Anybody who makes coextruded multilayer plastic films will tell you a simple monolayer plastic film is sooo 1970 !  Getting coex specified is a barrier to entry to monolayer film producers.   Complex is sexy.  Simple is boring.  Problem: There is an interdependency between the layers.  If something goes awry with one layer, it affects the entire structure. In general, it's a good idea to ask somebody what they do for a living before you ask them for advice.  The questions you need to ask proponents of coextruded blown film: Q ..read more