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São Paulo—Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo's decision to construct a new 20,000-sq-m gear box plant in Brazil will now benefit its injection molding business, which will also move into the new site, expanding its inventory, after sales business, training, showroom, and more.

Medical device manufacturers are the middlemen in the ongoing debate about safety of plastics. On the one hand are reports, often by prestigious organizations, showing a research project's questioning of the health effects of a particular plastic. The research projects may or not be translatable to a whole population and the research protocol itself may be open to question. No matter, however, when the researchers issue a press release. The media reports that such and such a plastic is not safe for use.

3D bioprinting recently made a dramatic move from the world of science fiction and researcher's fantasy to the real world of saving a baby's life at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI).

When it comes to the idea of “sustainability,” there’s a new idea beginning to take hold out there and it involves more than being ‘green’ – it means building a business that is profitable; one built on a value proposition that provides growth and longevity into the future.

Volkswagen's XL1 plug-in hybrid vehicle features some of the world's most innovative automotive lightweighting solutions, including polycarbonate (PC) side windows with Exatec plasma coating technology from Sabic. This makes the Volkswagen XL1 the first vehicle to feature this advanced plasma coating technology on two component (2K) injection-molded PC windows.

German-based Windmöller & Hölscher (W&H) is planning to increase its presence in China with an office in Shanghai featuring sales, service and maintenance, Philip Elder, W&H sales manager for China, told PlasticsToday.

"We take China very seriously," Elder said during Chinaplas 2013. "Asia-Pacific, as a whole, is such an important market for us and we have great confidence in the market."

Levels of residual bisphenol A (BPA) in devices molded from medical-grade polycarbonate are significantly below levels that represent a human health threat, according to independent research sponsored by Ethicon, a unit of Johnson and Johnson that uses polycarbonate.

Guangzhou, China - Never thought I would write about Oklahoma with the byline of Guangzhou. But then again, I never anticipated seeing Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb just a few minutes away from my hometown of Norman, making the news in China. Yet, here we are.

Guangzhou, China - Stealing. It's an age-old crime that continues to linger. But perhaps the most infuriating of them all, when it comes to the plastics industry, is intellectual property infringement.

"Obviously, we have to protect our technology," Wim Van De Velde, global Millad product line manager for Milliken & Co., told PlasticsToday. "This is why we take action to vigorously protect and defend the intellectual property."

New stainless steel metal injection molding grades allow metal parts to be manufactured at lower cost but with the same high quality and performance according to their supplier BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany).