Will This Be The Year?

Every indication is that this will be a good year for the economy and our industry. Years of deferred machinery and equipment purchases should break loose as manufacturing continues to rise and tax incentives provide true financial relief for businesses who wish to acquire new equipment. And while many commodity materials are still selling at low to no margin, that syndrome should also ease as demand increases.

This is an exciting issue - our first devoted almost exclusively to acrylic! Virtually every distributor and fabricator in the plastic shapes industry works with acrylic. What a versatile material. It is available in sheet, rod, tube, myriad of profiles and a rainbow of colors. And while it is primarily manufactured by one of three means, each technique imparts different properties. Acrylic can be cut and bent into a table top menu holder or machined into a component for a kidney dialysis machine.

Our six feature articles will be of interest to everyone who sells or works with acrylic. They cover how the manufacturing process affects acrylic's properties, sawing, laser cutting, solvent cementing and painting. We also have an overview of the products offered by sixteen leading manufacturers of acrylic shapes and twelve manufacturers and suppliers of products and services for those who fabricate acrylic.

Are you considering buying new machinery? Have you heard about the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003? Our first item in News Briefs provides a quick insight into what Uncle Sam has done to make it much easier to justify that new equipment purchase.

But don't delay. You must put the new machinery in service this year and delivery on some types of equipment could take as long as four months. Our special thanks to Michael Batky of Business Answers International for providing specifics on the tax relief program and the depreciation and cash flow example that can be found on our website.

Due to the length of our acrylic features, we were not able to bring you our Thermoforming Series, Routing Series or Safety Solutions this issue. They will all return to the March/April issue.

Finally, we would like to bid a fond farewell and extend our best wishes to Mel Ettenson for his many years of contributing Plastic Perspectives to the magazine. Mel is going to be devoting more time to his monthly newsletter.

Enjoy the issue.