Tyson Daniels’ journey to plastics company president has followed an unusual path — through the restaurant industry. The 35-year-old owns and leads the small Allentown, Pa., injection molding company Polymer Contours Inc., which he bought in 2015 after serving as director of operations for a local fast food franchisee with seven stores.
While it might sound like a strange transition, Daniels has always had an entrepreneurial bent and had worked around plastics manufacturing.
Uncertainty in the resin supply chain is sending ripples through the plastics industry and into end markets. The result has been predictable: price increases for the processor at the time of resin purchase. What are the biggest issues facing the resin industry at the moment, and what can the processor do to alleviate some of the pressure?
North American resin distributors are seeing some good things so far in 2018, even if the market is facing some challenges. Most distribution executives contacted for this story said that their firms’ results were up — in dollars or volume in pounds or both — in the first half of the year. Chase Plastics Services Inc. President Kevin Chase said his Clarkston, Mich.-based firm has seen volume up substantially at rates he described as “high single-digit” and three times that of U.S. GDP growth.