January heralds the start of a new calendar year. It offers us the opportunity to wish all of our readers good health, and safe and successful plastics processing for the coming 12 months.

The start of a new year also brings a good opportunity to develop a wish list for the coming year. Though in our pages we always recommend having a concrete, well-developed business plan, a little wishing cannot hurt the cause. With that in mind, and in lieu of New Year’s resolutions, we’ll wish for…

1. Plastics prices a processor can forecast. The only thing possibly worse than plastics prices continued climbing is having them climb when you were not prepared for it or fall when you cannot take advantage of it.

2. More wanderlust. It seems there is a dedicated crew of processors who make the rounds of the industry’s leading conferences and trade shows. Often enough, these are the more successful ones. The correlation is a direct one—to learn new tricks, it helps to see new places and meet new people.

3. A fair playing field. Infringement on intellectual property, and outright theft of ideas, is dragging down innovation, hindering profits at leading-edge processors and wasting the industry’s time, efforts and expenses. Let’s wish for severe crackdowns on those who steal ideas.

4. The might getting it right. Currency manipulation, occasionally ridiculous legal restrictions, and countries and instances where one could wish for more legal oversight; we wish for a dose of wisdom for all elected leaders to help them recognize what is broke and how to fix it, and to keep their hands off the rest.

5. An injury-free workplace. For many processors, the path to success has become even more difficult, and the pressure to compete is nearly overwhelming. We wish them all the fortitude to recognize that being competitive and guaranteeing employees a safe workplace are mutually inclusive.

Five wishes for our industry; we hope yours get granted, too.

The start of a new year also provides an opportune moment to consider where your business is and where you want it to be. As I wrote on this page in January 2006, where we are is well documented but I take pride in repeating it: Modern Plastics Worldwide is the most widely read plastics industry trade magazine.

The core of our business has not changed one iota: We strive to publish timely information that helps you operate your business more successfully. Last year we created a number of added-value offerings to ensure we earn your continued attention: our series on energy savings and our expanded e-Weekly newsletter; our Make Every Pellet Count series; the option to receive your magazine in digital format; and via a number of other products.

This year we will continue our Make Every Pellet Count series, we will continue to fine-tune our e-newsletter and other digital products, and we have added a new series, called the Greening of an Industry, to detail the many ways in which successful processors have turned to more environmentally responsible ways of running their operations. Each month we’ll also be pleased to update you on what to expect from our industry’s leading trade show, the K, held this October in Düsseldorf, Germany. MPW again has the honor of being selected as the official publisher of the English-language newspaper for that event.

Have a suggestion or concern? Let me know at [email protected].

Matt Defosse, Editor-in-Chief